Town Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everybody. I'd like to call to order the public hearing section of this meeting. First, we have Ordinance O-26-9, an ordinance of the Town Council of Chesapeake Beach, Maryland, adopting the annual budget for the general fund of the Town of Chesapeake Beach for the fiscal year July 1, 2026 to June 30, 2027, and setting municipal tax rates. Oh, is there anybody? Yes.

yeah well good evening how are you good good to see you sir debbie buckingham 3806 28th street uh can the town please explain how employee salaries administrative compensation accrue leave payouts severance obligations related to personal costs are reflected within the 2627 general fund budget So residents can clearly understand the town's total employee compensation package and obligation. Because this has gone about because of Holly Wall departing us, I would like to find out, as a resident of the town of Chesapeake Beach, how they consider providing a more detailed public breakdown of the salaries and benefits accrued in leave liabilities as a town resident in the general fund budget. Thank you, sir.

Thank you. Dan?

Currently in the budget, there is a salary schedule that lists the employee salaries, each individual employee and the proposed pay rate for them. The benefits are based as a percentage of those salaries. Those benefits are roughly 50%. So the salary line item in each fund of the town includes the amounts that are listed on that schedule, and then the benefits are about 50% of that, and they're made up of all the benefits that we offer, including health, dental, vision, life, and retirement.

Okay. Thanks, Deb. Anybody else? Okay, let's move on to the next one. Ordinance O-26-10, an ordinance of the Town Council of Chesapeake Beach, Maryland adopting the annual budget for the mitigation fund of the Town of Chesapeake Beach for the fiscal year July 1, 2026 to June 30, 2027. Council? Public? Okay, public. Anybody in the public have any question about that? Hearing none, we'll move on to Ordinance O-26-11, an ordinance of the Town Council of Chesapeake Beach, Maryland, adopting the annual budget for the water reclamation treatment plan. It's still the wastewater treatment plan, anything you want to call it, of the Town of Chesapeake Beach for the fiscal year July 1, 2026 to June 30, 2027. Again, does anybody have any questions or comments?

HEARING NONE, WE WILL CLOSE THE PUBLIC HEARINGS AND WE WILL CONVENE THE TOWN COUNCIL MEETING AT 630.

In fact, this is a small piece of . I'd like to call to order the town council meeting for the month of May, May 21st, 2026. If you would all stand, we will say the .

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, under God, under God. Council, do we have a motion to approve the agenda? Motion to approve. Is there a second?

Second.

Motion to amend the agenda. Okay. What would you like to do? like to amend the agenda to have the general fund 26 over 26 9 move to a special meeting on june 11th thursday june 11th to allow for the to be after the next work session for us to discuss the framework that goes over employee compensation as outlined by the town administrator. Seconded for discussion.

All right. Discussion.

Thank you, guys. I appreciate it. So one thing we've done is We've challenged each other to ask different questions. We've challenged each other to not just accept what we have in town and everything that's been there, but to see where we can go and identify things that may not have been always looked at in the past. I see that the reason for the significance to having a framework for what compensation gets done, besides that it being part of our town charter and town code, is that we have the water park. We have a lot of employees that are in this town. fiscal year going to be adopted. And I think that having a special meeting to go over this after our work session so that we can elaborate or build upon the framework that was presented to us is the appropriate thing to do.

Any other comments?

Yeah. A couple. Question for the attorney. Are we, is there any problem as far as what we need to do as far as adopting budgets and certain due date and all that other thing?

It has to be in place before the new fiscal year because you can't spend any money. It's inappropriate.

And assuming that the... If I could add, assuming that the project moves forward as planned, it would open at the end of the coming fiscal year, of the fiscal year that we're about to deal with. So that's why I believe that charge is there.

Also, there's a certain period, waiting period for an ordinance that would have to be done as an emergency, and I will have to check your charter. Some jurisdictions don't let you adopt a budget by an emergency.

Right, that was really my question.

Let me take a look.

Okay. So that was one question I had. And then I just had a comment.

I'm sorry, can you clarify why it would need to be an emergency versus just push to the next session? I'm sorry, I didn't hear.

Are you having, so June is difficult because of municipality.

But is the 11th, because I asked, is the 11th the council meeting, correct? Or is that just a work session?

The 9th is the work session. The 11th is a Thursday. It's not a work session. And then it's 20 days. June 1st is 20 days from there.

July 1st is 20 days from there.

So we would have the work session?

The 11th, though, is a council session.

No, the 18th is a council meeting, June 9th. And then the third, Thursday, is June 18th.

We would have to move something up then to achieve that.

Unless we can do it as an emergency, then you can vote on something else. Thank you.

I'm just looking at the dates in the card. I have a question.

OK.

If I could add one more thing, Mayor. I talked to the county today to find out when they need their tax rates by in order to get to the state, and they said our drop-dead date is June 18th. So if you want to include that in your configuration of dates.

Yeah, but you could set the tax rate before. I mean, unless you think that the things you want to discuss in the budget are going to are gonna impact your tax rate setting, you don't have to do them at the same time. That is good to know, so they could conceivably.

So I think, if I'm not mistaken, Dan, what you're wanting to do here is publicly review the salaries and benefits as a whole and discuss some charter sections related to that. And then would that, I guess my question is, what would the impact of that discussion be on the general budget?

I think the impact on the general fund would be salaries and it would be a couple things. I'm not all the way sure because in the discussion it might uncover other items, so I know that We are dealing with this, but it is not so much the items that we as a council and a body are doing. It's things that I've seen that have previously been done that it should be addressed now that we are at this point in the year.

i want to have this discussion i want to have the same discussion that you want to have um in open session but um and and really the one thing that i would like to see that's related but not necessarily um and coming upon this discussion that you want to have is we we have as a council and multiple members of this council have have expressed and discussed, particularly in our first year after the election and after the revelations of Holly's salary and all that, that we wanted to be more transparent with salaries. And it is disappointing that salaries are still scattered throughout all these budgets and nearly impossible for anyone in the general public to decode that. We have a decoder key. But, you know, I've said it, I know Councilman Schultz has said it, and I'm sure some others, is that we would like to see all of the salaries shown in the general fund, and then you can have transfer lines that show it. If you really want to move it to other funds, you can have transfer lines to show those movements. But as of now, it's impossible for the public to understand what's going on holistically with salaries. And that's disappointing. I don't know that we're going to get there right now in less than 30 days.

And I don't think we would be able to get there in less than 30 days, but I think what we would do is we would build on the framework that was presented to us. maybe adopt a resolution of what we as a council are gonna offer for our town. And whether it's a, we lay the framework that we're adopting this resolution that this is what we're gonna do to provide that transparency to the town taxpayers. We could then have that. So if we do amend the agenda or the budget or build upon it, we identify that we are working on a framework for it to be adjusted that way.

So, go ahead, Alyssa.

I was just going to get back to the timing question because I think it underlies this discussion. And I just wanted to say I don't see anything in your charter of code that would prevent you from doing it as an emergency if it became necessary. But since it's been pointed out.

After the work session, OK, I do have one more one more question and then I'm sorry now I'll give it to you. We have a general fund budget that is passed, so we're looking at here is an amendment. If we do nothing. Then we still have a general fund budget. Right? So there's that. What's being discussed that is an amendment This is a this ordinance we're looking at is an amend an amendment to a past good to a general fund budget that's passed correct and Oh, it's not. It was introduced. It was introduced, and we're trying to change it before passing it.

There are proposed changes that were discussed at the last work session that need to be incorporated into the budget. And then after those are incorporated into the budget, hopefully take a motion to approve the amended ordinance. So do we have...

It be an ordinance amended after introduction, not...

Correct. Correct. Yeah. OK. But. So do we have someone who because I know when we talked about this in the work session, I had asked that this sheet that had all the changes on it be in this packet, it's not, but I can access it here is the I mean, because the the amendment is is the amendment this i'm no i guess i'm a little confused because we have a an introduced budget so we're going to um we're going to motion to approve it and then who's going to is there is there a written

amendment yeah there's so i have the motions to make uh on behalf of everything that was said during the work session uh met with with dan uh it was somewhat significant so i was just is there is there like you know well i think that right now or something i think that actually supports this thing because if we all remember that last meeting when we did the

Home occupancy. If we're going to try to do that again, I don't think we should go. We have a whole list trying to follow along. We have to do. Yeah. But by being proactive, removing it from the agenda because it should have its own time, especially being a general fund, I think even supports this even more.

So the motions I'm making, though, are just the ones from the work session last week. So there's nothing additional there. So I'm with you. I completely understand the ask. And I'm all for the transparency as well. But the conversation last week when we had the work session was, we do need this framework. Similia sent a two-page document that outlines the problem where we are in violation of the charter. And it recognized the gaps, and it came up with a plan. Now, I think the way I'm hearing it is you're saying you would like to DISCUSS THAT PLAN TO MAKE SURE IT ENCAPSULATES EVERYTHING THAT, AS A COUNCIL, WE THINK MEETS THE CHARTER REQUIREMENTS AND OUR OBLIGATION FOR TRANSPARENCY, AND THEN YOU WOULD ALSO LIKE TO DO A RESOLUTION TO STATE THAT THIS WILL BE ACCOMPLISHED AND THAT WE'RE NOT JUST KICKING THE CAN DOWN THE ROAD. SO I AGREE WITH THAT. I JUST, WHAT I'M, WHERE I'M STRUGGLING IS WHY, LIKE, You don't need necessarily to hold the general fund budget approval up to accomplish that, because that is going to be a longstanding question. We talked last week about engaging MML. We want to get, I don't know what's saying, mary's county does we don't i don't know what north beach does so there's a lot of questions and dependencies that are going to be on this and then i do think maybe we can work with the town staff to generate that resolution i will 100 commit to supporting a time box solution to achieving uh this before uh the next budget cycle i don't think it's possible for us to actually implement something by june i just don't

So a few clarifications. I'm saying a special held meeting, which is 21 days from today. That would be the Thursday, June 11th. So we have a town council meeting on Tuesday, June 9th, where we could have a discussion that would incorporate this larger item into that special meeting. It would allow for the public to also input and then us pass the general fund that we have here. But it would incorporate the discussion in the work session for all the items. So all the amendments that we have can be discussed in writing. at the work session and then at the special held meeting that's in this motion to amend the agenda would give it its own time to discuss.

Okay, so I just I understand that The motions that are being presented are all the ones from last week we discussed So I just want to understand is the goal then to ensure that we discuss this in The public before voted on because we could still have the conversation at the June work session We could still achieve all of that. But my question is is if that conversation We know is not driving a change to the budget then then we're also just kicking the can down the road if we're gonna do it. So again, it's just, we're kicking it to June to have a conversation to vote on the exact same thing. But if the goal is that you're saying, I would like to have the transparency occur before the vote, then I, okay, I'm tracking you there.

So I guess it's kicking a can down the road, but I look at this as not kicking a can down the road about us not putting a cart before a horse. So with doing it this way, we are, for so many other people in oversight, and I think it is from the unpacking of how the salaries had gotten out of line in the previous administration for us to make sure that we lay out that framework that's going to guide us moving forward.

I guess the thing that occurs to me is that this is imminent and we need to move forward quickly in order to meet other deadlines, if I'm not mistaken. Isn't that correct, Dan? Just a deadline to have setting the tax rate right but And what's the deadline on that? June 18th June 18 and so my my thought as as I hear this discussion is It seems like one possibility is to move forward with what we have in hand and then use what we learned from that to make amendments going forward and so that we don't get ourselves in a bind here before the beginning of the coming fiscal year. And does that make any sense at all, Jamie?

Yes. What would the day be that we need to have an emergency meeting by? Is it realistic to set it? Because I do think if we're going to have another meeting, if there's another opportunity on the schedule in June where we're going to have this and it can still achieve the required outcomes for us to hit the deadline with the county and the 21 days required for the ordinance, I mean, if we can repurpose the work session to that special meeting. I'm okay with that if that's allowed, if it helps provide some transparency and clarity. I would just still say, I just think we're still going to vote on the same budget at that point. We're just going to have a conversation on the framework in addition to. Does that make sense? I don't know if I'm asking you. I think I'm asking Samelia. What would the day be that would be available for us to even do this emergency? Is it the 11th we'd have to convert?

So the work sessions, the 9th, the 11th would be a new day that we would be adding.

So could we convert the work session to an emergency session? And since the work sessions are not technically mandatory?

I was under the understanding that emergency sessions were like a five-day thing, but a special meeting you were allowed to have as long as you gave 20 days notice. Am I correct or incorrect on that? I don't know.

I don't know. That's a whole separate question. I was addressing the question of the emergency ordinance, which I'll come back to that. Your ordinance, your charter provides that no ordinance shall be passed at the meeting at which it was introduced at any regular or special meeting of the Council held not less than six nor more than 60 days after the meeting at which it was introduced, it shall be passed, et cetera. The 11th is not six days after the 9th. So right away, you're going to have to have an emergency ordinance. An emergency ordinance is different from an emergency meeting. You're not scheduling an emergency meeting. You're scheduling a special meeting to introduce and then to adopt, because you'll need Two special meetings, I guess. The general fund budget.

Okay, thanks for that clarity.

And then it is part of the... So the emergency ordinance can accomplish two things. It can waive the waiting periods between introduction and adoption, and it can shorten the period after the adoption for the effective date. So... In this case, you'll need to do both things.

Laura, did you have something you wanted to say?

I'll just say that I'm a little bit disappointed that we are talking about salary increases when we are also talking about adding expenses to residents. that's my first comment so and then also that there's some very high dollar items in this budget that are time sensitive and we need to pass them we all agreed to support them and this conversation in the absence of Some of the things we need to approve, the type of raises that are proposed becomes awkward for us with citizens who are very, very budget conscious or who may not like of the decisions we have made. That said, I will say what I told the mayor about the water park previously. I'm prepared to pass a budget minus the amendments that I alerted everybody to regarding the utility fund. And I'll be looking forward to holding everybody involved accountable for the salary increases that they have proposed for themselves to deliver results for residents. As everybody knows, there are certain results that I feel should have been delivered. There's certain information that I feel should have been delivered. And I'm happy to move forward with that goal in mind and with those results on the horizon.

All right, just a little two cents before we go to a vote on the actual motion. It seems like we have an issue here that deals with transparency and with legislative action. An extra meeting does not definitively give us transparency. Something that's transparent is a front facing item on the website or something that people can always look at during the year to see what the salaries are for our staff so that the taxpayers can see exactly where their money is going, so on and so forth. We already have information from our town administrator. That that is being worked on currently. That's not something that has to wait until the next budgeting cycle That is something that can come in the near future But that transparency is already in route to being taken care of the legislative action is something that we would have to have an idea of exactly what we want that yearly report to look like and Have it all in there have an ordinance go through vote on it and say every year This is exactly what we want to come to us for us to make the decisions that we have to make now We can talk about the last administration But that charter was what 1963 and it was updated in 1990. This is 2026. So for some reason the town has survived Without these things being in place for it to be all of a sudden we can't move forward Without this one thing in place that's already being worked on and that we actually as a council have to do more work on To bring something up to be able to have voted on to have it in place securely We have to do that work so I don't know You know i'm not a hundred percent sure that having an extra meeting helps with that because we can make sure the public has what they need but we have to internally do what we have to do to vote on so that the administrative staff can know how to move forward in the future and then we'll never have the problem again this is about solving that problem so that it can never happen again right correct and that's where i believe yesterday's outline

really identified the beginning framework that we can put into a work session, discuss it to have it part of that legislative act. It's giving that deliverable, not the promise of it.

So with all due respect, are we able to, as a council, assist with our town, make sure they do the thing that they need to for transparency, make sure that we have to do the thing we need to do legislatively without pushing back the work that's already been done? So that's the only question I have for the vote that we're about to make.

So I think it's putting the guardrails in place that is being worked on. Right. And it is the legislative act of making sure that's in place while we adopt the general fund. I agree with that.

It's putting it together. The safeguard is the job that we need to do. The transparency is the stuff that's going to come from the administration. The safeguards going forward is the job that we need to do. But I don't know if pushing back the general fund or taking it off of the vote for today makes a difference in that. We want people to have the information they need. We want the things to happen before they never happen again. The administration is doing their job. Let's do ours so we can get things done and keep moving forward.

we might be able to follow along but i don't think the general fund the general public is going to be able to follow along with how back and forth this budget's going to be for the general fund so that's why i say if we lay out the framework we put it in place we protect from these things that have in the past happened like you said it has been a long time we have survived i guess

But is that our measure? Doing the framework is the work we can get done. We don't have to wait until next year. And the transparency is the work that's currently being done. But if I was a member of the general public, I would have been at the movie theaters watching Mandalorian and Grogu right now. So let's just be realistic about it. Let's vote and move forward and see where we land with this. Yeah.

and i'd like to chime in that i think i think you you bring up a good point i think you bring up you you brought to the attention of the council that there's work to be done but i think that uh from where i'm sitting it's important for us to pass a budget And so if we can pass the budget, but know that one of the things that's going to come out of this entire conversation is that we will look at this issue that could stand some correction, some amendment in the future, and that we would implement that as soon as possible to take effect in the coming fiscal year. And that way we can achieve the transparency that we're talking about and so forth. And it doesn't jeopardize the operation of the town government in the short run.

I mean, I made a motion to amend the agenda. It's either going to pass or it's not. And if we're going to get into the details of it, I guess we'll do it during the meeting. I was just trying to make it its own own part so we could not get into everything that is going to lead to it.

Eric, you wanted to say something? Yeah, just one final thing to say. Dan, I really do appreciate your effort. I think that we can solve this issue, but it's going to take time, and we need to pass a budget. But I will say this. I think that there's a gap measure here, and I will make a motion when it comes time to vote on the general fund to add an exhibit a to the general fund which is the salary projection key decoder that we all have and we can add it directly to the to to the general budget and then the that will be public because the budgets are public and posted so then the salaries will all be there in whole and they can see what's going on this year. And then next year, we can do some codification into the charter to make it something that happens every year. But that's a good stopgap. So I just want to say I'm going to make that motion, and I also intend to vote against this motion.

All right. So do we want to vote on Dan's motion at this point? Yes, sir. Okay. All in favor of the motion presented by Dan say aye. All opposed. Okay, the nose have it so that amendment does not take effect. Okay. That was just the first item on the agenda, right? Okay. Let's see. We're a half hour into it. At the rate we're going, we're going to be here until about midnight. All right. Go ahead.

We didn't vote to actually approve the agenda.

We're going to go back to that. Motion to approve the agenda.

Second.

All in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. The agenda is approved. How about that? We're making progress. All right. Okay, we're down to it's time for public comment on any item on the agenda. Would anybody like to make any comments? If so, please come forward to the podium.

Well, hi, Debbie, it's good to sit in the back knowing you sit up near the front seat.

Debbie Buckingham, 3806 28th Street. The town has stated that these revisions are intended to modernize and clarify zoning ordinances. We're going to talk about zoning ordinances coming up. However, the proposals also repeals and replaces significant portions of the zoning code. and including zoning district, land use tables, standards, use of definitions, and official zoning maps. Since the comprehension plan is intended to guide the future land use policy of the town, how has the council determined these broad changes remain fully consistent with the adopted comprehension plan without the first formally revisiting and amending the plan before making these actions? You're held by the charter and you're held by the comprehension plan, but you're changing things without getting it right. Thank you. Oh, and I do agree with the transparency.

CAN I ASK ONE QUESTION TO YOU, MS. DEBBIE? YES. WHICH ITEM ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT THAT THE COUNCIL IS DISCUSSING?

I'M TALKING ABOUT YOUR RESOLUTION OF O-26-8. THE VERY FIRST ONE ON THE RESOLUTIONS NUMBER 8 ON YOUR SECOND PAGE. OH, AND THE OTHER THING IS TRANSPARENCY. YOU GUYS DIDN'T GET THE AGENDA ON THE WEBSITE. Until a half hour before this meeting or an hour before this meeting. That's not too transparent, guys. Actually, it's not a good job at all. So you're talking about transparency. You're lacking in it.

Because that was my fault, Debbie.

I thought I had sent it over to.

He's going to call.

But you're doing a good job. But the website is hard to manufacture, move around. As a person in a town, it's hard to determine what everything is. Okay?

Thank you for your comment.

Thank you, Bruce.

Oh, hi, Steve. Hey, stranger. Just another day in paradise.

Thank you. Okay. Again, these are emergency workers that are serving our neighborhoods and respond 24 hours a day. These are permanently disabled law enforcement and emergency workers, and I think it only affects a very small portion of the community, but I think it would be helpful to their families and them if you can support that resolution. If you have any questions or any concerns, maybe I can help you answer anything. We good? Thank you. Thanks, Stuart. It's good to see you.

He just walked away from me. Any other public comment on anything? All right, let's go down to number five approval of the minutes of the April 16th, 2026 public hearing. Is there a motion for approval? Is there a second? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Is there a motion to approve the minutes of the April 16th town council meeting? Motion to approve.

Question please.

Okay. All right. Let's get a second. We need a second. Second. Okay. Discussion. Go ahead, Lori.

I just have a question about how these minutes are put together. I know Sharon makes them, but I know on the planning commission, different people get a cut at them. And so what is the process for our minutes?

The minutes are taken by our town clerk. When she has put them together, she sends them to me. Then I approve them. If I have, unless I have edits or modifications, if I have edits or modifications, then I suggest that they're made and then it's submitted into the town package or the agenda package for review.

So the only two people that get a cut at these minutes are you and Sharon?

I also take a look at them.

That's what I thought. And the council vice president?

I do not take a look at them, no.

Okay. So Sharon Samelia, the mayor. Okay. I did make statements for record during this meeting. I'm not going to go through the trouble of amending the minutes, but I have been looking at the minutes. I don't think that's a super valuable use of my time because there's a lot of things to address. LATELY. BUT I DID MAKE A STATEMENT FOR THE RECORD LAST MEETING AND IT'S NOT INCLUDED. SO THAT'S MY STATEMENT FOR THE RECORD THIS MEETING.

NEW SPEAKER P. ANYTHING ELSE? ALL RIGHT. DO WE HAVE A MOTION? WE DID HAVE A MOTION IN A SECOND. ALL IN FAVOR OF APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF THE TOWN COUNCIL MEETING OF APRIL 16TH, SAY AYE. NEW SPEAKER P. OPPOSED? THE AYES HAVE IT. all right now we have the uh minutes of the may 12 2026 um work session is there a motion to approve those minutes motion to approve for a second second all in favor say aye aye opposed the eyes have it all right We're done calling the meeting to order. It is time for a special presentation from Michelle Kaplinger from Legit, Local Government Insurance Trust. Welcome. Good to have you here.

Hi, nice to be here.

And it's good to renew our friendship from decades ago.

Absolutely, absolutely. So I'm Michelle Keplinger, the Director of Communications and Member Services with Legit, and I work with the members in Benicon. for the legit health pool. And every year around this time, we give back surplus from the fiscal year, this year being 25 fiscal year, which ends June 30th. So you, Chesapeake Beach, has been a member of the Legit House since 2012. And actually, you guys have been doing pretty good out of those 12 years. Well, actually 13, I guess. Eight of them have been where you have received surplus back every year. And this year, you'll be, you've actually already gotten the actual check, but it's going to be $101,000, $130, and $0.99. Hold it up for them. Sure. And we can get a photo.

Oh, I'm sorry. How about that? We did good. That's good news.

And the time that you've been with Legit Health, you have actually gotten back over $770,000 from the time that you've joined.

You're welcome to come to any meeting.

So it's doing well. We've given back to members over $35 million, close to $36 million since we started the health pool, which was in 2010. so we're excited yeah we're excited when people get money you're exciting too yeah you're welcome did you want to get a photo or anything false is that why you dressed up that's awesome thank you so much

there you go you guys look great thank you thank you thank you for bringing good news to our council meeting so nice

OK, thank you.

Thanks again. Thank you. Great to see you. See you in Ocean City. OK, next item on the agenda. Alright, next item on the agenda is we have a candidate for the tree board and that is Kelly Bach. Can you come forward please?

Hi, I'm Kelly Buff.

Hi. And you volunteered to serve on the tree board?

Yes, I did.

Well, thank you very much. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Well, I've been a resident of Chesapeake Beach, my family and I, for about a little over eight years. Okay. I've married the two kids. My husband's family has originally lived in Calvert County for years, so they're I mean, he came back home, basically, when we moved here. And I have a background in finance. That was what I have done so far for my job. And I was also part of a, I was a community co-chair for a community outreach volunteer position, basically, at my last employer for about eight to ten years. So I do take community relations seriously. And I do, my family, my kids and I, we love walking around the rail trail and seeing all the improvements that have happened just recently. Actually, I saw all the new descriptions and stuff going around the rail trail. So it was very interesting. And so yeah, I'm interested in joining the three board.

Well, thank you. I mean, I truly appreciate that. And what makes the town tick is when we have people like you that will step up and volunteer for things that we need to get done. And so I can say on behalf of the entire town council that we appreciate your willingness to step up. And thank you for being here. One question.

Do you have a passion for trees?

I have more of an interest because we've definitely, with where we live, we've had some, we had to do some permits to get some trees taken down because of dying trees and then, you know, having to replant trees. And also like with storms being right in the wooded areas, we've had like neighbors and stuff where trees have fallen on their house. And I think our house actually had a tree fallen years ago, too, before we moved in. So it's definitely been an interest since that has kind of happened to safety as much as needing the trees.

Actually, at last meeting, we had the chair of the tree board. I addressed something similar to that. I guess my question, thanks for volunteering. Do you have a favorite tree in town?

Oh, I don't have a favorite now.

Well, thank you ever so much for stepping up. And it's people with generous hearts like you that make this town government move forward for all the citizens of the town. So thank you so much.

You're welcome. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right. Next, it is time for the town administrator's report.

The town administrator's report was submitted as a part of the agenda package. Of note, I wanted to flag that The council will vote tonight on the treatment plant RFP for the modification of the Aeration Basin handrails, which was discussed during the work session, and also just flagged that the rail trail expansion to town limits RFP has already conducted the pre-bid meeting. It was held both virtually and in person so that we would be able, because our Pre-bid meetings are mandatory. In order for us to be eligible for SHA funds, we had to make sure that we provided opportunities for people to attend online and in person. We typically only have pre-bid meetings in person, so that's why I'm raising that so you all are aware. It was by far the best attended pre-bid meeting that we've had. We had over... 26 people online and 10 in person. Some of them representing the same companies, but it is safe to say there's a lot of interest around bidding on this particular project. So that's promising to hear and wanted to share that with you all. Additionally, in our April meeting, there were questions about the water park and there was an FAQ section that was promised. And so that is now up on the projects and investment page focused on the water park. If you scroll down to the bottom, you can see the the responses to all of the questions that we've received about the water park. So that's there and it's steadily being updated. There was a request for status update for the water park, and that was included as a part of the town engineer's memo to council. So you all have received that as well. Additionally, I have an update from Randy Gatman as it pertains to election, the upcoming elections. So I will just read it how he presented it. Calvert County primary elections will only have Republican and Democratic ballots. So for the primaries, there's no independent ballot. And that was due to a small number of candidates for the Board of Education. However, all candidates for that race will be on the November 2026 ballot. Important dates to remember, the registration date or deadline is June 2nd. That's the last day to register to vote ahead of the primary election. And Tuesday, June 2nd, is also the last day to change party affiliation for the primary election. The early voting centers, there are three of them. So Ward Farm Park in Dunkirk, the Community Resource Building in Prince Frederick, and Southern Community Center in Lusby. And all of this information will be shared in tomorrow's e-blast as well. So that is an update on that. And then... Just wanted to flag that we do we are having stars and stripes this weekend. It's still planning to take place the rain plan if it is to rain on Saturday in the morning would be to move the Memorial the service portion in the morning into the chambers And so that's where we will have that and it will be student. So stay tuned to the socials and we'll keep everyone updated and lastly Moving to the planning and zoning side, the planning and zoning administrators report is submitted as a part of the town administrators report. So 1 thing I wanted to flag is there's a nice infographic that Sarah created so that people can have a reference guide for better understanding the zoning amendment process. And I would like to invite Sarah up to the podium, so she can talk a little bit more about the proposed zoning regulations as it pertains to fences, which is in the agenda later discussion.

Thank you. I just wanted to review what zoning regulations were discussing at each meeting because there's a lot going on in planning and zoning and it is creating some confusion as to what is where in the process. And so tonight you are looking at zoning regulations with regard to fences and We talked about at the last meeting what why we have fences, right? What are the purposes of fences? And so in the backyard, they can create a private space where we can keep our dogs in the yard and keep an eye on our kids. But when put in the front yard, they can interrupt community space where we have a place to interact with each other. And so that's why we want to be careful about how we develop our fence regulations. our current regulations are in the building code and so they have a limiting standard of three and a half feet height for all fences that don't need a permit and then to get a permit that is six feet you it has to be a special purpose fence and it has to be approved by the public works administrator they it's very rigid where they can go they cannot go in the front yard at all they actually they can't go in the front half of the property as opposed to in the yard or not. So if your home is towards the front of your property, you might not actually be able to build a fence that connects to the sides of your house. And so there were several problems coming up, including that, you know, if you have an oddly shaped lot and you want to fence in a part of your yard, you might not be able to fence it in at all under the current regulations. So we discussed moving it to the zoning code so that the zoning code can allow people a way to apply for a variance when faced with a unique situation. And so the regulations do a couple of things. They create a spacing between the ground and the bottom of the fence to address storm stormwater issues. There have been some issues with how fences have been installed and having them be damaged or become flying debris. So that is covered in the new regulations. It clarifies those front yard regulations and actually allows the fence to come up to 10 feet from the front of the house. So it's tied to the house to your building rather than your property. So you really can fence in your backyard and Currently, it deals with allowing the unpermitted legacy fences and creates a resolution for them. It doesn't have to. And then it deals with the property challenges we talked about. You've got two pieces to this tonight. 0263, which is going to remove the building code regulations and take that away from the public works administrator where there's the limitations and the subjectivity. And it's going to move it. through Ordinance 026-08 into the zoning regulations, which have clear defined boundaries. And then if the permit can't be granted within those boundaries, it provides folks with a way to go to the Board of Appeals and say, I have a unique situation and may I please have my fence.

We had like 45 minutes of discussion. Did we have any answers to all of the questions that were come up? I mean, I think there was some for the attorney. There was a lot of... I don't think it was ready. And I think there's more problems with it than we want to address. And I'm not in favor of how it's written. I don't think that it is...

everything's been considered it's there's not a framework for the the many different questions that were brought up that i thought we were going to get an answer to okay anybody else got any questions comments real quick um you know i asked this at the um work session and i thought the answer was three feet fences were allowed in the front yard but i think is that true

So it's three and a half feet. It could be three feet, right? It can't be taller than three and a half feet. And so the new ordinance allows a four foot fence in the front yard. So, cause you can still see over that and interact with your neighbors and also keep that space defined for yourself.

Yeah.

Yes. Councilman Duvall, I think I heard you say that there had been questions asked to me about this ordinance. I don't have any email from you on this.

It was questions at the last work session that were directed where an attorney would weigh in.

That was it. I wasn't there. The only way I would know that you had a question is if you send them to me.

So if I can kind of review the notes that I have from the last meeting, the conversation was about gaps in fences, what happens when sort of you're connected to your neighbor's fence and your neighbor takes their fence down. You had resolved that then you would have to build your own fence, right, if your neighbor was your fence. We talked about the grandfathering and the 10 years, which was trying to allow fences that have been here, maybe when code enforcement didn't happen to be permitted. You guys wanted to make some changes to that you didn't have. consensus on whether you wanted to remove it or whether you wanted to change the date. And so my understanding was that that amendment is going to be proposed this evening by one or many of you to come to how you want to resolve that. And that's the grandfathering timeline. And then most of these other comments like really tie into that grandfathering we talked about why we prohibit tall fences in the front yard. And we talked about easements and the reason that the when you want to build a fence over public works right of way, that you have to have this agreement that gets filed with the deed. And at that time, and Attorney LaVon, you can weigh in at the time I had kind of provided the information that you had shared that it needs to go with the deed so that someone who buys the house has that information about removal. But I don't know if you wanted more details on that from the attorney. And those are the notes that I have from the meeting.

It was my understanding that we had all kind of had a report and that was going to, we were going to have them, questions all summarized, not each and every one go recap the questions. I thought that's what we were going to have some input to what the 10-year rule, how that messes with, and if someone, we say someone's allowed to have a fence, it's on their fence. someone believes a fence is theirs, but it's on a neighbor's, but we said they're allowed to have it, and we get in the middle of a property dispute. There was a whole bunch of things, and I thought we were going to have a recap from that, but it doesn't look like that happened.

I think your concern was that if we say we're not going to enforce a fence that's 10 years old and that 10-year-old fence is actually on the neighbor's property, then that we would be Functionally saying that that resident had the right to the neighbor's property and so that's really the attorney can answer that question, but I Thought you guys had resolved that you were just going to change that and that was why we didn't need to resolve that issue I Understood it that we were supposed to get opinion on it because like I said, I was not a lawyer Right, so I don't know You can't by ordinance

give somebody their neighbor's property. So if an ordinance is on somebody else's property, the fact that it doesn't have a permit does not make it lawful on the neighbor's property. The person on whose property the fence exists still has a claim for an incursion of property against the person who put the fence on the property. It's a separate question from the issue of whether or not it was

it complied otherwise complied with the town's zoning ordinance correct and i was more along the lines of an established fence line because it would be grandfathered in so if a neighbor had one and then he found out it was he wouldn't be able to reconstruct his fence and move it he would just be without a fence because it was built on his neighbors and so there's no clause for that

What you're interested in seeing, I just want to make sure I understand, then the zoning administrator can weigh in. I think I hear you saying that what you'd like to see is that if somebody has a fence that's illegal because it's on their neighbor's property for whatever reason, and they have to take it down because it is on their neighbor's property, that they should, and it happened more than 10 years ago, that they should be allowed to put up a fence on their own property to replace the fence that had to come down because it was unlawfully on the neighbor.

Yeah, I mean it's like one of 30 different scenarios that you can run through and that's why I think that it was not, it did not have the amount of work there and it's going to create more of a burden. There's also, I heard that there was a whole list of people in wait to get a fence that's not allowed to get a fence. I just think that it's not ready.

There are always various scenarios that can happen with any ordinance. Ordinances, zoning ordinances are not designed to imagine every possible scenario while we try to imagine many scenarios. The issue of whose property the fence is on is not regulated by zoning because all zoning can say is, I give you a permit to construct this on your property. If you violate the permit and construct it on your neighbor's property, unless the town is going to go and have a survey, which the town is not, unless it's egregious and obvious that the town can say you built that on your neighbor's property, then the town is not going to get involved. If it's two inches over, then the neighbors are going to have to have their surveys and they're going to have to deal with that as a civil matter. And so the each individual fence issue when it comes to neighbor disputes will have to be handled as a civil matter. The town will never permit someone to construct on someone else's property. And so I think I'm hoping that answers the question.

Right, but we're establishing a fence line and we're regulating, governing a fence. So fence line. How are we? So if, for example, if a neighbor's, it is assumed and perceived that their side yards, which constitute the majority of their fence line, is not on their property. And nobody's mad, but then... Part of their back fence gets broken and they don't have any fences because the two side fences are on their neighbor's property and they just have it connected. They can't fix their fence.

They just have to come and get a permit. Yeah.

If it was a grandfathered in and they only had a section of fence, they wouldn't have the fence line on their property to allow for that.

I'M SORRY, BECAUSE WE'RE STILL IN THE, WE'RE NOT EVEN TO THE ACTUAL THING TO MAKE A MOTION TO VOTE ON IT YET. WE'RE STILL IN THE TOWN ADMINISTRATOR'S REPORT. SO I THINK IT MIGHT MAKE MORE SENSE THAT IF THERE IS AN IDEA OF HOW TO FIX THIS AND THERE IS A MOTION TO PUT IN, then we can do it at that time or we can vote it down if it's not ready to move forward yet. But we pretty much are having this conversation again from last week. We did, I do see lawfully existing fences constructed prior to here. So there have been some changes and I think Councilman Duval did a great job last week with really going through this and having some ideas and things that he wanted to be taken care of. But I think while we're still in the town administrator's report, this is starting to become something really like Twilight Zone-ish to me.

Thank you, Anthony. If I can just quickly clarify that we can never allow anyone to build anything on anyone else's property, even if it means they can't repair their existing fence because it's on the neighbor's property.

Makes sense. Come on.

Since we're on the town administrator's report...

zoning work you're doing. I know you're working with ADUs. Yes. And I heard you say you're having trouble getting somebody to conduct a parking study. So my question to you and the town administrator is what have you done to get a parking study in place? And have you put out an RFP? And are you going to have a parking study before we let parking become a problem in our neighborhoods?

So with regard to ADUs, the parking study was defined by the legislature, which means that most firms that do parking studies don't actually have the capacity in-house to perform part of the function. And therefore, they're not really able to do it. Now, a lot of different jurisdictions have come up with creative ways to solve that problem and create a parking study that complies, that can be produced if we need to go kind of the quick and dirty route, if you will. We can do that. We would like to have a comprehensive parking study because you have other parking issues. And I have had one firm say, okay, we can contract out this piece and we will get you a quote, but they just haven't done it yet because they have to contract out that piece. But it's just a matter of it's not something they normally do because it was designed by the legislature.

So what I would say is we've been talking about the fact that we need a parking study for this EDU thing. And then the problem is if we don't have the parking study, then we are limited in how we can protect those areas from being overrun by traffic. So the implied task is to do the forecasting and get everything in place for that parking study to be facilitated financially, and physically in time. That's my comment.

Yes. I've discussed parking studies. I actually had a plan. I met with the mayor, town administrator, public works administrator. I was told that there was going to be a parking study before we changed any zoning, before we did anything, because I said that if we have the Water park opening and if we don't address parking now in this year, we're gonna really get in a jam I had proposed budget I had proposed a thing and that got shot down now I'm here and they're not even able to do a parking study and we're talking about moving and changing and we want to Down zone this place and downs on that place because we can't allow for parking I mean we have Our roads and streets allow for a certain width. And because the town's not there, we can have all street parking. We're not even addressing it. So we're going to say we didn't make the roads that way. So we'll just down zone it because the road's not wide enough.

Okay, well I have two questions question statement one to do the parking study is that in the is that in the current budget that we would have like the money to do that or Do we need to ensure that that's Dan you're shaking your head now?

I Don't recall any money put into the current budget or the Fiscal year 27 budget for that. I'll never recall that as being an ask um

And that's because I haven't been able to get a quote.

Right, okay. So we'll have to address that at some point in time. Okay, an amendment of some sort too, but that's a good call. The second piece is, I just want to be very transparent on, and we've talked about this, the Planning and Zoning Committee, whatever they do is a body that informs and provides an opinion and a perspective, the council adopts the legislation. I have not been in any discussions with anybody on council, I don't know if maybe you guys have, but I have not been in any discussion with any council member about down zoning any single piece of property or doing anything. I know that there's a lot of questions about Comprehensive, I know Lori's extremely familiar with the comprehensive plan, but I personally, I know planning and zoning is doing stuff. I know the only thing that I've asked for is to simplify and modernize. Now we can, that could be perceived as vague or challenging at the same time. But I do want to be very clear that I've heard you say, I've heard a couple people say that because planning and zoning is looking at something, that that is actually occurring. That does not occur until either four votes say yes or three votes in the mayor. But I just want to be very cautious that when, because it's not Sarah, our planning zoning administrator, who is doing this. And planning zoning can have all the discussions they want. They could talk this to death.

Correct, but they're quoting the stuff that we gave them and saying that's what we told them to do. So there's a misunderstanding that's happening. So instead of us all just waiting for the misunderstanding, we can address it here that's saying we're not asking to down zone the RV1 and RV2. We're not asking to down zone and change the zoning. So we are making sure there is a... we're not going to miscommunicate because what the planning and zoning is doing, if we're not paying attention to what that is, this is our opportunity to not waste their time. So we don't have fence ordinance that don't make no sense.

Yeah. Okay. But, but you gotta be cautious with, you can, you can say that, but us, Well, they can quote us all they want. A lot of people quote us. A lot of people misquote us.

Quoting us in the work that they're doing, I'm trying to address the misunderstanding. This is that opportunity.

If I can clarify, because what you just said is you said to simplify and modernize. You said to simplify and modernize and you asked for a vote to support that. So that is the council directing the planning commission to simplify and modernize the land use table and the conditions and special exceptions. And yes, so that is maybe a little vague, right? And so we are trying to do the best we can with that. And we are also trying to make sure everything has a legal basis because there are discrepancies between the map and the text in the comprehensive plan. We need to be consistent with the comprehensive plan, but there's two different pieces that say different things. And the goal that we keep focusing on is simplify and modernize. And so I guess I would ask if the council has a different goal, if they want to communicate that. Or, I mean, with the map. This is the thing about the map is that it's going to come from planning and zoning, and it's going to come in front of you wherever it is. And it still hasn't gone to GIS. And I keep harping on this because it's very important. The process of how we change the map is as important as the final result. And that's because everything that is zoned on that map has to have a logical reason that is defendable for how it is zoned. And so if we don't go through the process and explain that, especially with inconsistencies in the comprehensive plan, it creates legal challenges for us. And so that's why I'm really making us go through the process. The map got pulled in because we can't create simple text because there's an issue with the RV1 and RV2. And the simplest way to fix it is to fix it on the map. And so I don't know if we're misunderstanding the direction, but I hope if we are, we can get some clarity on that.

So I would say, I will still stand by simple, because when you were reading text earlier today, and I have no clue what I was saying. I had to chat GPT just to make an actual understanding of the text. I think to your point, though, We do need to have, if there is a gap in communication, we need to close the gap. So I think, yeah, let's put it forward. And if that's your challenge, and I agree, I'm not for any downzoning now because I don't even understand why we're downzoning. If we're going to have any of those conversations, anything like that, we'd have to... honest conversations about it. So, I mean, like, let's just close the gap through, like, an email either to, probably to Samilia to engage the planning and zoning to maybe clarify, you know, we need to have a conversation and, you know, we can do what we did before where we, what did we do? What was the actual terminology we did?

Yeah, so it needs to be a vote. So there's a couple things. There's this thing in process, right, which is that you gave them six months. They did ask for an extension. They did get significant changes.

That was only for three things, though. It was for the home occupation, ADUs, and was it rentals?

No, it was actually so the direction I went back and looked because we kept saying, like, what are we being asked to do? The direction was simplify and modernize the land use table and the the condition conditional uses. and special exception. Okay. And it's the modernized that's created and and simplify really that's created a whole repeal and replace of those things because in order to make them clearer, simpler, easier to follow, OKAY. WE NEEDED TO CHANGE THE WHOLE TABLE.

SO THE PRESIDENT OF THE PLANNING AND ZONING PUTS TOGETHER THE AGENDA, IS THAT CORRECT?

MM-HMM.

I'M LOOKING AT YOU BECAUSE YOU WERE ON PLANNING AND ZONING. YES, THAT'S CORRECT. YEAH, SO THEN I WOULD SAY THEN WE PROBABLY MAYBE THEN TO HELP THEM, WE COULD HAVE A CONVERSATION ON WHAT ALIGNS TO IT AND WHETHER THAT DOES, I DON'T KNOW. IT JUST SOUNDS LIKE WE NEED TO HAVE JUST A CHAT. OBVIOUSLY, MAYBE IT COULD BE A PUBLIC DISCUSSION BECAUSE YOU CAN'T HAVE TOO MANY PEOPLE IN A ROOM, BUT WITHOUT IT BEING IN PUBLIC. OKAY.

So I would say that if we're doing zoning, that we need an entire work session. Or we change anything.

Yeah, I'm not looking to change anything.

At least, but sometimes we're scraping at the barrel here for any time at all on important issues.

You can just wait for zoning to give it to you, right? And then, so that's kind of how the process typically goes. You ask zoning to do it, zoning gives it to you, comes to you, and then we're going to go through it, just like... just like planning and zoning did, and you're going to want to make changes, and I'm going to help you make those changes or advise you that something needs to stay because of a legal issue, and the attorney will also confirm that and advise on that. So it's not, the process is not done. The process is working as it's designed to work to encourage maximum engagement of public and appointed and elected officials.

And I'm sorry to have you standing there so long. I care. I just want to swerve back for you and the town administrator. Is there anything that we can assist in or any planning or anything we can do about getting the parking study done? Because we have to have this ADU thing wrapped up very soon. So what can we do or what kind of decisions do we have to come on the consensus of as far as the council is concerned to help move this forward?

I will say if we get to really the end of June and we don't have anything, if this one firm isn't able to produce anything reasonably priced, we can produce something fairly quick in-house that will meet the requirements of the... legislation around ADUs, which is different than the parking study you want, right? You want a parking study to look at Kellums and just like all your general parking. That's not tied to the ADU. The ADU, the legislators gave four items that had to be considered in that parking study.

And they didn't give us a list of people we could get it down with, huh?

well, those items aren't things that are normally studied by people. So that's the trick. And as more people are producing these, and especially counties, I'm starting to see some other options that could be put together relatively quickly if we have to. And then you still do. You still do want a parking study, right? So it's just different things and different needs. And there's a lot, and it's all confusing. So I understand that.

I'm sorry, go ahead.

What I would add to that is it's You're trying to meet the two kind of separate desires, but they're related, right? So the reality is that the state legislator pushed this and there's a time limit on it. So there are certain things that, like in June, the work session, part of it is going to be the ADU discussion, right? And so because it has to be in effect by October one. That's part of the reason why we have to move quickly on this. So it's possible if it's the will of the council to phase the work, right? Like if we're not able to get a reasonable quote for a parking study that fits the parameters of the legislation that's coming down to do this more, crude approach to a parking study in order to meet the requirements of the legislation so that we can move forward and have that in place by October 1 and then phase that budget appropriately once we have a quote back for what it would cost to do a traditional parking study and do that larger effort later. But we just, it's, ideally we'd be able to do it in one foul swoop, but it doesn't seem like it's shaking out that way and we have to wait until we hear back from the consultants.

And for the sake of my fiscally responsible council members, do we even have an idea what it might cost?

I did ask them for that range, and I was hoping to have it today, but they didn't have it today.

But they just don't want any money, do they? Yeah. They don't? Okay. It's free.

So we're going to discuss ADUs without the benefit of a parking study is what I'm hearing.

So the Planning and Zoning Commission sent you ADUs last night. I haven't sent it to you because, you know. Right.

So they discussed it without the benefit of a parking study. Now we're going to discuss it without the benefit of a parking study. I mean, it's a problem.

I agree. It is a problem. It's just that we have a timeline. And so we have to work on ideal. Right.

But we know about the timeline. And this, again, goes back to...

right task and putting us in situations that are not ideal right and if i was able to get a parking study response earlier i would have i'm sorry that i wasn't i have no choice but to accept that answer all right next go in here yeah good

Any more questions on sign? All right. Thank you, sir. All right. We're going to move on to the town treasurer report.

Thank you, Mayor. You have copy of my report in your packets. answer any questions that you have on that i did want to touch base on one item which i included a copy of the bond amortization schedule from the issuance of the bonds for the water part this kind of spells out the rate that we got and the amount of the bond So, as you recall, we were issuing $5.9M in bonds for the water park. The bonds actually sold at a premium, which means people paid more for the bonds than what the face value was of them. So if you look at the very top of the sheet that i gave you the amount of the bonds that we actually issued were five million four hundred and forty six thousand sixty dollars instead of 5.9 so that is the amount of money that we need to pay back uh the purchasers of the bonds as i said paid a premium so they paid 552 000 more to than what the face value of the bonds were. And that is because the bonds were favorable in the market. They are tax-exempt bonds. So people paid more for those bonds than the face value. So therefore, we benefit from that. So the actual proceeds from the sale of the bonds were $5,998,000. That's the amount of money that the town received. We did have to pay back to the CDA, the Community Development Administration, which are the ones that issued the bonds for all of the issuance costs of $98,602. So the net loan proceeds to us, the amount of cash that we have is the $5.9 million that we were looking for. So, that was a good thing. If the bond sold at a discount, we would have been, you know, borrowing basically more than the 5.9. So, as you look down at the amortization schedule, you could see that the total principal amount in the first column, $5,446,000, is the amount that we'll be paying over the 15 years of the bond. And you could see the interest and trustees fees, et cetera, associated with that. The actual interest rate on the bonds was 3.94%, so it was pretty much in line with what we were anticipating when you decided to go out to borrowing. So that's the only item that I wanted to touch base on, but I'd be glad to try to answer any other questions you have on any other parts of the report.

So this is, we scheduled for 15 years, but at 10 years, we can pay it off. So we can amortize this for what a 10-year payment structure is.

I believe when Charlie Day, the administrator for the program, was here, there are no prepayment provisions allowed in the documents in the bond.

I thought he said that...

it was 10 years you had to at least have it for 10 years and then after the 10th year you could pay it off i'll confirm that i don't remember that that would be more typical that there is a period of time during which you cannot pay it off and then you can yeah i think you're right though i think it was 10 years okay i'll send them an email and ask them to confirm that and i'll send out a response to everyone

yeah so no no we could look at what about 10 if we based our payment on 10 years what that would look like prepay you can't prepay it was 10 years you can get to pay the payment for 10 years and then you could pay it off is that how long song okay you can't prepay okay is that yeah

Thank you, Dan. You're welcome.

If there are no more questions for the town treasurer, we can move to the public works report.

So we have my report. I'll take any questions, but there was two things I wanted to mention in addition to my written report, but I'll take questions first if there is any. Okay, well, there may be after I say this. On the first page, one thing notable, and I do want to say it because someone will probably sit here one day and say, we need new generators throughout town. But our recent, our newest generator is not even a year old. It's at Bayview Hills. And if you read my report, it's failed three times when we've needed it. So that picture is we had to install our backup portable drive power while that generator was offline. And my point is the newer, Generators have PLCs, they have emissions, they have death fluid, they have a lot of things that I cannot override, which I can in our older generators, which we have some that are 30 years old now, which is about five years past their life. So I'm giving you some logic. I may come here one day and say, we need a new generator here because I'm gonna run them till death. And the reason being is they're dinosaurs, but they work. We can override them. And this generator runs and it exercises like all the other generators, but it doesn't actually go under load until we have a power failure. And that's when it fails the moment we need it. So we're in the middle of the night running out there with a dry prime. I'm just mentioning that to the council because if you look at my five-year plan, I'm replacing generators with dry primes. They're an actual pump. They fall under different emission regulations and they have different standards and they're way easier to work on, multiple mechanics I could call to fix them where this particular generator is like two techs that can service the circuit board in the area. So anyway, I just want to pass that on. Second thing notable is Verizon phone company came to town with a permit application to install fiber throughout the entire town. We're currently under review with the attorney and the town administrator looking at their rights. You know, as public right-of-ways, they have certain things that are different than IQ Fiber as far as a public entity, right? They're a public entity, Verizon. But that's under review. I wanted to just mention that because they're in the process of submitting that permit as we speak. And so did that arise any other questions?

I have one question. Sure. On the front of your report, it says, we are aware of a failed sewer line that will be repaired in the fall. So my question is, I'm sure that you have made a workaround. I'm just, I have no doubt about that. So...

Sure. So this is, and the reason, and so it's budgeted, and next year's budget, because it's substantial, it's an anomaly, and due to its closeness up against State Highway, it's going to involve a prolonged permit process, which I've already started. um but the incident that i'm going to say the straw that broke the camel's back is we actually had sewer water spill into a residence house there's an isolated insulin and we're dealing with it so we are now aware of a problem that we can't have happen again i'm going to take measures and it's going to be um a coordinated effort with state highway and expensive we're going to have to shut down a road it's not in this year's budget but is in next year's budget under the utility fund and it will be fixed in the interim We have taken measures to ensure nothing will happen until we get it fixed.

What road is it on?

It's on F Street. And it's F Street as you go up 260 leaving town on the left. It's kind of a dead end road across from the F Street probably most people are familiar with that's on the right. And it's literally at the white line on 260. So you have the island there. It's gonna involve a lane closer, a shutdown. It's gonna be a project that I have to coordinate with State Highway.

The sewage issue is being taken care of right now?

We have a, I'm gonna call it a temporary bypass method while we work forward with this project.

Okay. main thing i wanted to hear yes um and i know you got my message that i'm going to make a motion about uh the saddles um i'll just go ahead and ask you now that saddle that i hope to have removed from the general fund where is it and um why why is it in the general fund and Do we need it? Because I understand your perspective of you don't want your guys working all night. You don't like to be surprised. I get all that. From my perspective, when you do lifecycle capital improvements too quickly, you're burning through money. And I'm in trainings on this all the time about IT stuff. But I guess the most relevant example that I get is you drive an $80,000 truck that you need to drive for work. And it has a life cycle of five to eight years. And you just had a baby. And so if you replace it every five years, at the end of 20 years, you've done it so many times. and you have this much money left for college. But if you are able to stretch that out eight years now, you're paying for college for your new baby with ease. And so that's what I'll say about the lifecycle things and and why I would like to see that removed. And that is in addition to my feeling that it is the mismanagement of the utility fund being, you know, buoyed by the general fund that is going to create lifecycle costs for general fund needs. And it also is going to make us less likely to do general fund services and projects that we should be doing. everybody understands my feeling about the safety issue in Chesapeake Village. So now that I've said my spiel, tell me about your saddle.

Sure. So a couple things. And one, I think I promised or mentioned that I would share a PowerPoint with the council that I did with the last administration and how we kind of, so it's multiple saddles. And I did a show and tell and I did a bunch of stuff. I totally get the life cycle. And I'll tell you how I can express that. You look at state, SHA, they have five years for their vehicles. Counties, seven. We have 10. So you look at the difference. We would have 20 trucks for Public Works in 100 years, where we have 10. It's half. So I get it. If you can extend it two years, the cost savings is exponential. So I totally get the process. The only thing here is... there's value in that truck and you trade it in or you sell, it doesn't go to complete failure. Here, this PowerPoint I will share shows the This thing is going to fail. We've done the test. We know where the next ones are. We've test fit all around town. We paid a firm $18,000. They came out and did a two-month study, soil samples, captured everything, and suggested, here's what you should do. Here's how the proactive way. In this PowerPoint, it shows the cost. We took 10 random samples, 10 that failed. 10 that we proactively fixed and it's three to one cost wise if it fails you have a big hole in the road you have emergency resources you have people offline you have twice the material to bring back the patch in a road is three times the size so the cost is three to one proactive versus reactive beyond all the safety features i need to share that to be more informative So in other words, I know these are gonna fail. The ones that we did proactive, we've learned that 10% of them have already failed, so the water was leaking out. We just didn't see it come out of the road. It had made its way to a stormwater easement. It made its way to a sewer line. One thing I did learn in our audit, to show you, I'm gonna show, those are known costs. We get audited by MDE, and when I took over, we produced x amount of water for the town i'll share that in my powerpoint actually it isn't a powerpoint so when i took over the supervisor of the potable water system we actually produced more water before chesapeake village was built the heritage was built than we do today and that was due to all the leaks that were in richfield station that we didn't really know so we actually produced um around 120 a million gallons less than we did almost 15 years ago. So there's other costs that you don't really see a dollar sign for, but they are out there. I didn't bring it with me because I was gonna get asked tonight, but it's 141 more saddles total. Most of them are in Richfield Station, the areas that we didn't do. Some of them are in Bayview Hills main drive, and the bottom are from the lowest court out on Moffett. Those were all kind of built in the same timeframe. If you look at my power point, during the late 90s to the early 2000s, there was like an inferior steel across the US. That's where all these saddles were made out of. And that product, it wasn't a bad installation. It wasn't something that, in Richfield Station, there were a lot of subpar things that were done, and we've captured those, but this was just, Globally the steel was bad and we're suffering from it because of our diatomaceous soil, so I Know that's a whole lot of spiel, but I do want to say that it's not just safety It's cost effective to do them up front we can time it people we turn off water at nine o'clock We have it back on at three we do three a day, and we're doing it for one third of the cost of after the fact and it's planned but How it got out of the general fund, how I was asking for that, the ARPA fund, which was not ARPA funds when we got it because it was spent and then we did it. The town granted 1.5 million then. And I'll look with Dan. We only spent 1.3. So in my mind, I was like, hey, we have this ARPA money left over that we never spent. And that's why I said take it from the ARPA money. But I understand the ARPA money doesn't exist the way I understand it now.

You're saying that you spent $1 million out of the $1.5 million that was allocated by the previous administration for the saddles?

That's the way I understand it, yes.

Okay. There's another. I would prefer, if that's the case, that we reflect it that way in the utility fund, and we make that a habit, that we are reflecting utility costs in the utility fund, because the misrepresentation of what those costs are make it very hard to budget and to project.

I can appreciate that.

I would hope that we would see in the future when it comes to us utility costs in the utility fund so that we can properly budget and plan for all the other things that a town needs to do. And then also so we know what to charge our developers. I think the developers are responsible for a lot of utility costs when they come in and do development. capital connections and burden on the system that is caused by high and high users. So that's that's my spiel. I will make a motion to remove it. It doesn't mean that I don't, you know, believe you or understand what you're saying. And we aren't doing the utility fund now. So I'm back in to a fund, but Just so you understand.

I appreciate that. So I think there might be some common ground so you don't have to repeat yourself every, you know what I mean? It's you hear things and then as stories come together, you kind of can see a way. So you said five year plan. You have a five year plan for the generators, right? why don't we have a five-year plan provided to us for the town that has all these things there we could have a five-year plan for getting in compliance with our water and sewer manual we could have a five-year plan for the saddle replacements we could have a five-year plan for the infrastructure replacement and preservation so the things like f street don't happen this is there's common ground here and i think the bird's on you you got to give us that you can't say i got a five-year plan where's that plan at You've got to produce that to us. So I think there is some sort of headway here.

Well, I will just say, and I'll share it with you, there's always been a plan. We hired a firm to do a plan, and the entire plan was almost $14 million for the water and sewer system. When we did three of them, I can give you the rest of it if you want to do it. I would love to. that's almost a 15-year-old plan now. Well, ignoring it, I think that's what she's getting at.

I mean, every month she's talking about it. I think there's something here. So if you're saying you have a $14 million plan that's 15 years old... It wasn't my plan. It was an engineering firm. If you're saying that there's a $14 million plan that's 15 years old, maybe there's a...

The council has a point here. I think the idea here is that we want to be proactive instead of reactive. I'm all about it. Right. So we just need to figure out how to get there.

Reducing it when you see it.

Hold on. I'm going to defend Jay here for a second because he's not a magician that just can mind read whatever five-year plan that we want produced at the moment. So I think it goes to Alyssa's point earlier. If you need something in advance, reach out. Laura brings up a valid point. You have a question. If you want to see the five-year plan, okay, he's got it. He can take it for note and he can send it to us. But I actually have a different perspective. I don't want you producing a five-year plan for every single thing because then you'll never do work. You'll just do bureaucratic paper writing. And I would prefer public works as doing public works. I'm speaking. I think that there's a...

Who would you prefer to do that? I'm not saying that.

No, let me say it. I'm just saying that the point being made here is we're attacking our public works administrator for not having a plan for every single thing that we think of off the fly. You didn't say that. I'm just saying it out loud. You have to give him an opportunity to produce the information. If you want it, ask for it, but you cannot go in with the presumption that he is just going to produce it for you at will. Where I'm saying is I don't care for actions where somebody's trying to assume and prepare for stuff that's not been asked for because that is wasted time. If something comes in and asks, then absolutely I would expect that that is delivered.

Okay, let me just clarify.

Hold on. That's not what I heard that I was chiming where I was hearing the middle ground. Where I was hearing the middle ground is he mentioned that there's a five-year plan that he has in place for the generator replacement. That makes sense to me. That's how things work. He says he has other plans in place. So if we were able to itemize and have a priority, if there's a report, he's saying that there's a five-year plan for that. More than likely, he's saying there is a plan, so we should see what that plan is so we can budget accordingly and things don't get ignored.

That's what he's doing right now. He's putting things in here saying this is the five-year plan. He's giving us a report right now. When we listen to him every third Thursday and pay attention and read what he gives us, that's the report, and those reports are the plans. And he can give us any insight needed when we have questions on those things. So what's being asked for is, in a sense, being done. If there's a question about where the money comes from or how the money goes, that's not really... just you, but as far as the procedure, what needs to be done, what has to be done, and how it's going to be done, that is what he's presenting to us right now. So I don't want us to swerve all over the place because we have other reports to get, but I will say that we do have a five-year plan for the generator. It seems like the saddle work has been going on before we even got up here. There has been studies and so on and so forth, and those things are things that we can get a hold of and take a look at. If there's anything else that may need to come up after that, let's talk about it later. Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

I want to respond to this because I worked with Jay previously when I served before. I think I hired you, didn't I? A little prior to that, Gerald did. Gerald did, okay. But at any rate, there is so much involved in being the superintendent of public works in this municipality. And it's like you're being shot at from every direction, okay? I mean, I'm not saying by people. I'm saying by events that happened. And there's a lot that Public Works has to react to. And they don't have a choice. But some things they did. you know, the saddle replacement. I was in the public works building on a number of occasions when I saw the saddles that had been removed and they were, how tall was that pile? About eight or 10 feet, wasn't it? I mean, there were saddles in there and all of this takes people, it takes time, it takes money. There's always more to do than we have the resources to do, and you have to pick and choose. But I'm not going to allow a whole lot of criticism of Jay only because I've worked with him for a long time, and compared to everybody that I worked with who preceded him, this man right here does the best job of any of them. and so i don't want to hear a whole lot of complaints about jay himself now the situation what we can do as a council to provide the resources that are needed i think that's appropriate but i don't want to hear criticism of the staff especially in this case so what we're saying is you're next so i'll follow up at the end so jay we have a paving report right

i know we've discussed the saddle replacement report what i'm saying is i believe having them reports as an annual report going into budget would provide a nice so we have an annual projection i think that's what would be best so we say this is what we're doing next year and the following year i think that's a good common ground is what i'm hearing So it's not an allegation. I'm saying there's some common ground for us to find. And inside of a budget time, that's a good thing to have a summarized review.

And it's the council, this government's responsibility to provide the resources for these people to do their job.

I'll just follow up real quick. And I don't take any of it as criticism. Okay. I don't take any of it as criticism. I don't take any of it personally. I live in town, you know what I mean? And I've been here a long time. And with all due respect, I've seen all these players change. I've dealt with many administrations, many mayors, and I'm comfortable where I'm at. Don't worry about it. You know, I hurt my feelings. And then we have the same goals. But so what I do is I come with this, hey, we gotta do these saddles, because it's a fire, I see it, it's a tick, I hear it, tick, tick, tick. There's a lot of lower ticks out there. I could share them all with you. If you gave me $10 million, I could justifiably spend it today. But I sit here and watch the council for six months argue over not raising the water bills. So do you want me to come in the middle and say we need $10 million? So I'm trying to find, I'm gonna fix what's a ticking time bomb. There are 100 different things we could do, trust me. I'm gonna share the report with you. It's recognized, it's out there. So what we do, I work for the town and we, okay, there's situations. How can we minimize this? How can we get by without doing it? Well, we can jet this line more often. We've recognized, hey, this line's flat. They recognize it's flat. Well, you're not gonna spend $8 million to fix it. What's the fix? Well, instead of jetting it once a year, we jet it six times a year. Right, so it's a minimal cost now, but we're handling it, so it's like, to me, that's a low priority. Something that's gonna fail and blow on the road is a higher priority. Last thing I'll mention is I do have a five-year plan for the entire utility fund. Dan has it, it's part of the record. So it's, I mentioned generators tonight, they're on that plan. and I'm replacing them with a dry prime pump. So there's two that are gonna hit 30 years old, they're on that list in my five year plan. And I was just kind of mentioning, they may fail tomorrow, so my three year lookout to replace it, I may say, hey, look, I know I had it planned on this year, but I need it now. And I'm telling you, I'm running them past, five years past their life already because I like them, because I can fix them and they work. I can override a sensor on these new ones. And I'll just share an analogy. We all have a car, and maybe when you were younger, you had a chance to work on it. You're taking your car to the dealership now, right? Because you don't even know how it works. And they might not even have the person there that knows how that part is broke. This generator is that tenfold. It's under emission standards that are putting diesel fuel at 15,000 PSI to aspirate it before it burns to meet 99.9% efficiency. And you don't have to know the physics. I do. Diesel fuel's a different animal. These things, if one little thing's off, it doesn't run and you cannot override it. And now the power's out and you got sewer coming up. So I'd rather have what I know works than I can fix it. That's just one analogy and I was just mentioning it. But I do have a five year plan. Everything I think's a ticking time bomb is in that plan, Dan has it. There may be things I'm not aware of that come up, and I'll come here, and I will say this. Every administration, every council I've dealt with, if I came in here and said, look, we really got a problem. It's news to me. I need this to fix it. They've always found a way. But I want to make up front, sure, so you guys know when you have to make decisions. I don't take any of it personally. you do what you think's right, I'll do what I think's right. I like objective criticism. It's like, hey, I can learn. I'm not perfect. Don't ever be shy to mention it. I don't. I thought we're on a five-year plan for this meeting. Well, we are, but I'm longer. It may be, but I wanted to say how I felt.

You know what I mean? I think that's the middle ground. I think this puts us to rest. Okay, maybe 1 thing that was brought up to my attention and a question raised to me personally is was the capital connections. Someone said that they looked at the properties and it was a confusing story. So, if I'm. So in the budget, there was some capital connections that were maybe on Elm Street or something like that. They said something about the property had septic system. It seemed like it was in the water. It was a mess of a story.

I can probably answer that real quick. I think it's a very tough build. I do know the builder that bought the property has built two houses on Elm Street very similar. These are way more difficult. But... I was asked, are there any possibilities? These are two that I know that could happen. Do I think they will happen in this year's budget? It'll be tight if they do, because there's a lot of restraints to build on that property, but it can be done because it's been done before. So I just, they said, are any going to happen? There's two that could. The property was bought by the same builder, but there's a lot of hurdles to jump through to even do it.

I'm just relaying a message. I don't know much about it, but there's a septic system there or something? Yeah, there's homes in town that are still on septic. Oh, yeah, there's a number. There's a number of them. Well, I think it's holding tanks or something like that in, was it Chesapeake or was it the Highlands? But that's not in the town.

Well, some of it's in the town.

Yeah.

Some of the failed septics in the highlands have holding tanks now. That's an after the fact. But there are areas within town that didn't, they weren't wearing the sewer manual, not within 500 foot of a town road. So they weren't required at the time to get there.

And this is one of the building lots. There's two of them.

So they have a septic system. No house there currently. They're empty lots.

OK, let's move on. Sure. Next, we'll go to the wastewater treatment plant. Because I think this is going to be brief. Oh, it can be. I'm counting on it because we've got folks that have been waiting back here very patiently for about two hours now.

All right, so I just want to do a follow up from the work session for Councilman Duvall. You had a question about the handrail thing voting on this evening. You were questioning. how long the pricing is going to be good for when this goes out there's going to be an agreement that gets sent out to the contractor for the the project and it has the cost in there from the bid that they're going to sign off on as a 90 days to for completion so the cost that was bid is i'm fairly certain is what's going to be on that agreement thank you anybody got any questions

Anything you want to, any highlights you want to give us in 30 seconds?

Yeah, I can do it pretty quick. Just to give some updates on a few things from my report. Kroger Electric completed the replacement of the wiring for each of the basin actuators. They did that on May 12th. That was where we were showing ground faults and issues with the insulation pipe. The electrical work was relatively old. Got all that work completed. We're all good to go on that. imax did some emergency work for us on the 12th we had a failure with a vfd for a belt filter press we notified them on may 12th we let them know at one o'clock actually on may 11th we notified them at one o'clock they were actually able to have that work done by noon on may 12th so they're able to source the vfd get down here and get that replaced well before end of day the following day and their their offices are actually located 30 minutes south of Pennsylvania state line so just shows the quality work that they do for us. One thing I definitely want to note, one of our trainees, Eric Montgomery, he took the wastewater 5A certification exam on May 13th. He's made multiple attempts so far this year, and he did pass the exam finally, which will allow him to be promoted up to a full operator. That will get where we have two operators to plan in addition to myself and the assistant superintendent.

That's really good news. Good news. Congratulations, Tom.

So now I looked at the other guys and said, your turn. Get it done.

Yeah, but please pass the council's congratulations along to them.

I just want to note that the current passing rate for that exam right now, it's about 13% state. That is how difficult that exam is.

Well, it certainly takes a lot of skill to do what you all do.

What's the reimbursement for that? What is that? So is there an exam cost? How does that educate?

We get no reimbursement for cost for the exam.

But we pay for those, right?

Yes, we do pay for the employees. That's correct. Okay. Yeah. And I have that budgeted for multiple exam attempts for a year in our line.

Once he passes the exam, he's eligible for an increase in salary, right? Yeah. So that's, and it's worth it.

I told him, thank you. You've just messed up my budget for next year.

I mean, I think you guys have a nice structured budget.

It makes it a lot easier. I've been doing this for a while and I found that if you do that, I have a spreadsheet where every year I use the same spreadsheet and I just got to change certain numbers and everything. It automatically populates, makes my job a lot easier. We had our PFAS sampling done the week of May 12th. We're hoping to get the results probably next week. And once we get those, I'll take a look at those results and try and Get into a report for y'all that will be help clarify what we have going on. We also just let you know we have a scheduled routine MD site inspection for June 4th at 10 AM. This is regular routine inspection every year to come in. I welcome him coming in there way. I look at it. I'm not scared of him coming in. If we have a problem, I'd like to know that way we can address it. I don't foresee them finding any problems so. Does anybody have any questions?

I have a comment. Yes, sir. I really, in my being back about a year and a half now, I'm really happy to see the way that the plant is being operated. I'm very pleased. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Town Engineers Report. How are you tonight, Wayne? Mr. Mayor, how are you?

Just another day in paradise. I can tell. You have my report. I'll just give you a few updates since this was written over a week ago. Chesapeake Village Pedestrian Connection, the state has reached out to Samilia and I. We will be walking with them the week of 6-9 through 6-16 to look at the new route. That's good news. I guess that means they're considering our grant. The water park, your grading permit was issued today. That's a huge thing. Oh, that's huge. That's huge. Can we say that again? Can you repeat that a lot? Can you repeat that two or three times? The grading permit was issued today. Fantastic. They are simply waiting for MDE sign off on the NOI and they can start moving dirt or concrete or whatever. We expect your guaranteed maximum price bid sometime in the next week or two. Now that's been issued. They're waiting for some clarification on a couple items. had a meeting out there earlier this week to discuss the design the design of the alternate buildings so that's progressing as well beach elementary school we are we will be out there this summer after school that's out uh with mid-atlantic asphalt to fix the one one thing they have to fix on the parking lot and plant three shrubs and i think that project will be closed out i'm waiting for them to give me a price but they said it'll be after 6 15. And the rail trail RFP was out. We had a pre-bid meeting, as Samilia said, and today was a close for questions. We received a ton of questions, which we are working on, and we will get the addendum, the meeting minutes, and the questions out early next week. And your bid day is June 4th on that. So that'll take any questions. Any questions? It all sounds good. Go ahead, Eric.

Yeah, you.

I'm shocked.

I'm shocked.

For the comes master plan here you have noted that finalize the master plan revisions to address Council comments and prepared phasing or phased budget. Is this is this still. We never saw the revisions or the budget. Are we going to see that, or is this the real status?

I mean, I guess that's from his perspective, yes. But the reality is we've gone back and we've requested a meeting to have some further discussions to do what we talked about at the work session, where we would break it out and provide options and then present the full thing, the budget. Yeah, so there's... It came back... high i guess i'll just like it came back high so i think we owe it to the council to have some additional options uh and whether that looks a la carte or you know like one two three but something like kicked back to design basically yeah yeah kick back to design and we need to have some in-person conversations on it um all right okay

for the water park you have the last item specific water park report uh pre-construction progress meeting scheduled for 5 21 that was today how'd that go we actually had it tuesday while we were already here we're all here at the water park doing the auxiliary building um review we did it on tuesday instead of today it went fine it's basically

A conversation about where we are on permits. As I said, your grading permit was issued today. They're waiting for state health department approval to get their other building permit together. They're working on that. They're working on their GMP, guaranteed maximum price. They have a pile contractor selected. They're beginning to start thinking about demo down. We have a permit, so it's moving along.

I do have one question. The permits that went through were demo and construction were submitted together or separate?

They're together. The permit that was issued today is your grading permit, which allows you to demo and do the new construction. It's all the site work. It's just not the structures. Oh, I have another.

The structures?

Correct. Your building permit would allow you to do structures.

So how is grandfathering going to be approached without- I think we're past that conversation.

I think we're good.

Okay. That's all I want to hear. We're good. I hope I hear that the whole way through.

Yep. Eric, what else? Yeah, I had, what was it? Oh, yeah. Is it correct to say that the auxiliary building design scope of this project is separate from the water park construction? Yes, it is. Okay. And so that'll be, that's, is there going to be a separate RFP and that's bid separately?

No, it's part of the RFP that Scheibel bid and accepted. They're just now designing it. So there'll be an RFP for the design of it, yes. But it's all included in the budget we have to date.

Okay.

But it's a separate phase because we wanted to get the water park started because auxiliary buildings can come later. They're not as time sensitive from a construction perspective as the park itself is.

Okay. I thought, if I recall, when we were discussing the contract and the budgets, that those auxiliary buildings were not going to be part of the prime contract for the water park. They are part of it. Okay.

Okay.

All right. I think with the announcement of the parking study, we need to definitely throw a flag up when it comes to how the water park is going to affect parking in an area with any of the design when it comes to Kellam's Field. If we have a back to the drawing board type of thing, we need to really make sure we are looking at not making it so there's nowhere to park and everybody's just frustrated us because we don't have a... thing in place. Now with the water park, are we getting something? Has the owner's rep already been involved here and are we getting a report from him?

The owner's rep is involved. He's working under me and the summary which I gave you includes his information.

No problem, just making sure. And so he's more once, how much is his involvement now and what are you expecting his involvement to be throughout?

His involvement now is checking all the contract documents to make sure they're accurate for what we expect. He's also managing the pre-design process with the contractor. He's very, very involved. As we move into construction, Their pre-design or pre-construction representative will back out, and their construction representative will pull in. Both of them have been involved in all the conversations to date, and they will be going forward.

It was all three of them that showed up, wasn't it? All three of them. Yeah.

Right. So two of them are currently involved. One's more involved right now in the design process and making sure the contract documents are correct. He will pull back and give it to the next guy when construction starts.

It sounds like...

But they will both be coordinating it. They're fantastic.

So there's a merge together to coordinate with you, and you're happy with that? Yes. I'm glad to hear that.

It's been going very well.

I hear that.

Thank you, Wayne. I think we're keeping you pretty busy. I'm enjoying it. That's a good thing. And next time you're going to be here during the week, let me know. I'd like to just sit and chat with you for a little bit. Not a special trip, but just sometime when you're going to be here.

Just one more question, Wayne. The questions are over.

Well, go ahead, Wayne.

It's nothing. It's not controversial. Easy for you to say. The last item in the pre-construction survey, the last sentence says the town residents may view the video or photographs of the site. Where can they see that?

I have them in my computer at this point. I think I was supposed to say that 10 of you may see my staff videoing them around the site. That's a typo. So we did one on 521. They're in my computer system. A pre-construction survey is basically to document existing conditions in and around the site. We're doing another one next week, actually inside the Northeast Community Center. So I think that's a typo. They're in my system. They're for our records so we can document pre-construction conditions. Got it.

All right, thanks.

Great.

Thanks, Wayne.

Thanks for everything you're doing. Are you all using, like one of the things I use is like Procore and stuff like that in my job. Do you all have a program like that?

We do. It's not Procore, but it's a very similar tool.

All right, let's move on. Calvert County Sheriff's Office Department, Sergeant Norton. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. It's good to see you. Good to see everyone.

Everyone got a copy of the town report? Yes, all right for April 2026, the sheriff's office handled 159 calls for service, which was slightly down from 176 in March. We had 735 self initiated activities to include patrol checks, traffic stops and follow ups of the 159 calls. Some of note, we did have a motor vehicle theft in Richfield Station off of Forest Drive. It's a stolen vehicle. The victim left their vehicle, excuse me, not left their vehicle, left their keys in their vehicle overnight. Someone took it. The vehicle was located the next morning in Lexington Park and taken as evidence to be processed for fingerprints and everything. That investigation is ongoing. But just as a reminder, Don't leave your keys in your car. Make sure it's locked up. Did have another package theft on D Street. Didn't have the particulars on what items were in the package other than it was taken. It did have a rear tag stolen from a vehicle on C Street. That tag has since been entered into our national database as stolen, so if any officer comes across it, it has a flag on it to notify us. And we actually have our tag readers at all the ends of the county, ins and outs, and we get notifications daily of stolen tags, stolen vehicles, things that pass through the county, and we do our best to locate those. had a fraud at the Chesapeake Beach Fast Stop subject, tried to pass a counterfeit $100 bill. They received change, and then the attendant realized the bill was counterfeit. However, we did locate and arrest that subject. With our heavy traffic enforcement, we had several DUI arrests, traffic arrests related to subjects driving without license, driving on suspended, driving on revoked. Had a couple warrant services from traffic stops and some CDS violations. Had a couple DOPs around Chesapeake Beach area. Those, several of those are ongoing still. That's destruction of property? Oh, I'm sorry. I get used to just saying that. Yes, destruction of property. I apologize. Funny story with that, when I worked on the task force with the DEA, I was doing background on a subject I was investigating. And I said, oh, he's only been charged with DOP. And the DEA agent looked at me and goes, oh, what's that? He said, destruction of property. He goes, oh, I thought it was something cool. I've never heard it referred to as a DOP, so funny story with that. Sorry, I still do that. I just spout it out because people are used to hearing it, so I apologize for that. And CDS is controlled dangerous? Controlled dangerous substance, anything related to narcotics, prescription medications, anything like that. Right. Had several violations of protective orders. If you notice, those that are on there are related. They were one and the same. That subject was also located and arrested, and he was one of the destructions of property, or DOP. I'm sure everyone has questions about the bomb threat that we had at Rod and Reel early April. I did put that in there. That was determined to be nothing. We did respond. We did our due diligence. We had our bomb dog come down. We evacuated the building. Myself, along with several other deputies, went through the building, took the dog through, nothing was out of place. We spoke with employees there, everything checked out okay, and it was allowed to go back to business as usual. So that was handed over to our criminal investigations bureau with our detectives. They followed up on it, determined it was not an actual bomb threat. But I still put it in there as that because at the time of the report, that's what we were treating it as such. Any questions?

Any questions, anybody?

I have a few items. Thanks for showing up a little late tonight. He's been here the whole time. No, no. Thank you for showing up. It's a late night. He's saying it's a late night. Right. Yes, it is. One of the things that brought up in the wintertime around the snow that I wanted to circle back to is there was a few cars I noticed that when you plow, you can see which ones are there or not. There was a car over in Seagate and it has a flat tire. It has like, I don't know, some out of state tags or something like that. I don't think the place is occupied. I don't know. It might be another stolen vehicle now that you brought them up, right? I can definitely check on that. It's been sitting there for months. I don't know if it's just left or whatever. This is the council snitch session.

However, if there's nothing wrong with it, it's fine to see it. I can definitely check on that for you, but if there's nothing wrong with the vehicle, it's a private parking lot, so we wouldn't have that remit.

No, that's where that little stop gap was. I got it. The snow, that was the start going back to that when you mentioned the stolen vehicle.

All right. Okay. Thank you very much.

It's always good to see you. I'll be here afterwards if anyone thinks of anything. Appreciate that. Thank you for your time.

Can you pick up some pieces since you're going to be here that long?

Of course, the volunteer fire department.

Good evening. Greetings from Chief Stanser, President Gee. Everybody got to statistical report, I hope. It's been a couple of Pretty quiet, actually. We had, I think I told you about, we had a couple of our members going to the state competition for the firefighting out of CTA with the school. Proud to announce that we took the gold medal and the bronze medal in the state. And the... I call him a kid, but he's not a kid. He's senior this year. He's 18 years old, but he will be going to Atlanta to represent the state of Maryland in the national competition. He was the same one that he went last year on the firefighting side and received the silver medal for the nation. Wow. He's got a chip on his shoulder this year, so I'm expecting him to bring home the gold. Unfortunately, they had to move the competition, so he's going to miss out on his... Being able to walk for graduation and his baseball, high school baseball party and everything, but he's going down there to win, so we're gonna wish him luck. We hosted the Parks and Rec, the junior fire camp again, very well attended, kids had a lot of fun. We took them up and down rides in the tower, let them look around and everything. one call i'd like to highlight we had a pretty unusual situation where we actually were able to save somebody with a the basic unit no paramedic als intervention because the medics were tied up they were out of out of the area we didn't have a medic and we got a call for a unresponsive person our safety officer and one of the deputies assigned down here were right around the corner Got there immediately. The citizens were doing CPR on them. The deputy and our member took over. They were able to get an AED, which was located in the building. and actually were able to bring him back and have him talking in the back of the ambulance without any kind of paramedic intervention, which is very unusual to get a basic life support saved like that. But quick CPR by the citizens and, I mean, just perfect, perfect situation.

Can I interrupt you for a moment? Yes, sir. Many of you know that I've had heart issues. And I was working at PBS over in Springfield, Virginia. And I went down with a cardiac arrest, and three of the television broadcasting engineers were in the area with me. And they had an AED, and they resuscitated me. And if it weren't for that, I wouldn't be here. So if you have the opportunity to learn how to use an AED, if we, you know, we don't have one in the building.

We have.

Oh, okay. It's okay.

All right.

Okay. All right. So good. The town's prepared. But I would just say that, you know, I'm personally very grateful for the invention of the AED and for the teaching of the people that know how to use it and had the skill and the will.

Yeah, and it just goes to show that quick CPR, it makes the difference. It does.

The AEDs now are set up where it's pretty much, they got all the instructions.

They're pretty easy to use. Yeah, they walk you right through it. And they're even a fail-safe, so if you're not using it perfectly, like if you don't have perfect pad placement or anything like that, it's still very effective.

Yeah.

Very effective. We have them at Kellum's, too.

We have them at all public buildings and even our private buildings. And staff is trained on them also.

Yeah, and interestingly, once I had my situation a number of years ago, they even installed one at Chesapeake Church where we go to church. Hey, you've seen them a lot. I gave them the incentive.

We saw on some or context comment from you I know it's not part of the report, but that you can submit it From the work session was with the work session we had some those About tax credit Yes. I was wondering if you could have that report sent to the Calvert County, like the volunteer firemen, whoever's in charge of the management structure, and sort of if they could sign off or kind of get some insight on it, I would... have some legs on that i just want to make sure we're not undermining the management structure at the county level just because there are some town residents who don't volunteer in the county or that in the north beach in the town and in the residence you know and we don't want to create a conflicting battle well by that i i can do that but my answer is that is if you if you live in the town and you volunteer somewhere else and you want to tax credit from the town come join down here and that's the absolute point why i wouldn't be in support of it because then we're undermining their authority you know what i mean that's it wouldn't be for us to get involved in the in the management structure of how Calvert County has their volunteer program. That's where I would not want to be in that position, you know?

Well, there's not really a management structure. I mean, I can go volunteer anywhere in Calvert County, anybody. We have... the majority of our residents, or I'm sorry, the majority of our members are not, I mean, they live in the community, but not actually in the town. Not in the municipality. So, I mean, it's unfortunate that they can't, mean they don't have to pay the town taxes so you know it's not hurting them but like i said there's there are several and that's one of the uh one of our goals is to get anybody that is eligible that lives in the town to come support their community but the uh the head of the volunteer association for calvert county is one of our members so he could i mean vouch for the program and let you know i mean we can we can

him do that or i don't know how you want to go about doing that but yeah one of one of uh one of your volunteers is uh my great nephew uh steven flowers yes and he doesn't he has the chesapeake beach address but he lives down right outside right outside of the town limits yeah right and he's a professional firefighter in prince george's county yes yes so yeah however you uh i mean whatever

A letter or whatever you need.

I can make it work. I think there might be a chief that's inside of town for hunting town. There is. And I don't want to do something that entices the management structure of the other volunteer firehouses. And that's what I wouldn't want to be an objection trying to do anything like that because. I don't know. I think we need to stay in our lane when it comes to that. That's my opinion. I just want to make sure we're not trying to create some incentive.

I just think by doing that, we're taking care of our members that live in the town.

Right. My thinking is it could extend to town residents, and if they volunteer, we could create a structure that would also benefit him. He receives a benefit from the county.

So I look at it as, you know, if you live in the town that you volunteer in, that's the benefit of it. But I can, like I say, I can get, it's Chief Friesland. He's the one that's in charge of the county. I can have him write a letter of support or if you wanted to, however you wanted to do it, that's fine with me. All right. All right. And just a quick question. I want to direct over towards our friends at Public Works. If they had a chance to look at the situation on D Street that we had talked about earlier earlier in the year.

We did, and I appreciate he gave me a little heads up before it. So Dan's probably familiar a little bit. Some of our ride-arounds all the way back to Chris Mills and the chief now, we had, if you all remember, a fire in the swamp earlier this year. Yeah, it wasn't long ago. Yes, and the fire trucks couldn't get down D Street, and it's always been a parking problem, and it's one of those things. I agree. It's a narrow street, and there's many of them in town, and I don't proactively, which I know Dan's looking at them proactively, but this is a situation where now we've had an incident, and if you look at that street, it's like an hourglass. It starts kinda out as a normal street, then some vegetation and trees, who knows why they did it in the day, narrows down to one lane, then it opens up at the end to two lanes. So we are going to go in this year, it's part of our paving program, and take out the hourglass. We're going to make it a standard street.

Well, didn't I see him taking the tree down the other day?

no that's a different tree so this has been out there i mean i snow plow that section and you have to turn your plow all the way and back out it's one of those things i've always known it there wasn't really a incident that set it off now that it's been brought it was brought to my attention by chris mills the previous chief um but there's been an incident we're going to do it it's going to make three citizens not happy because they're part of their yards the town road but We're gonna do it. It's our road. I've reached out and we notified them. We had a fire and they couldn't get apparatus down the road and we can, People are parking perpendicular, it's a whole nother issue. So that, and also I wanna, Orville Thrasher, if you've been in the fire department, you know who he is. He always points out things on the adjacent road, D, or David Lane, the trees have grown in to where the fire department's in the same predicament, although trees don't stop them. They rub the side, but we're gonna go in there. I've reached out to those citizens. The town has all the right to do this. They're well within town limits and road. But we still reach out to citizens that have lived there and said, hey, we're coming here, and here's why. So yes, we are going to do that, and I appreciate you bringing it up. Thank you very much. Any questions? Thank you for being here.

Anybody got any questions? Anybody else? Thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for your patience. You're welcome. Time for the mayor's report. I have a couple of things here. This is the fun part of my job.

You're taking a picture, I'm surprised.

Certificate of appreciation here. Allow me to read it to you. This is for, help me pronounce your name, Vinaya? Frenchy?

Yes, sir, good enough.

Okay, let's do this before. The certificate of appreciation. Proudly presented to the day. For outstanding achievement and local history research and community presentation. In recognition of your outstanding dedication, strong work ethic. And commendable commendable initiative and advancing local history for your project. When the trail meets the tide. You've been really very cool in life. Your achievement as a district winner in the Calvert County History Fair. The town's first annual Celebrate Trails Day reflects maturity, leadership, and community pride beyond your years and are sincerely valued and honored. It is signed by myself and by Samilia Akbodu, Our town administrator, and I am so happy to have you here tonight and you know what? We are all very proud of you. Allow me to present this and make a statement.

That was a good thing.

Thank you so much and thank you for everything you're doing and dad. You're doing great with the camera. Yeah, that's good. What another one? Yes, please. Yes, sir. Yeah. Thank you once again. The fun part of being mayor being able to do things like that. And now what's up on the screen is from Beach Elementary School, just the other day, I think it was Monday, It was this week. And I believe that was the fourth graders, if I'm not mistaken. And they had written or received certificates that the school, the teacher asked me to come up and present to them. And so I will tell you, I'm not used to being and uh being in a room where all the fourth graders in the school are in the in the in the uh cafeteria uh at the same time and you know what it's loud and uh i'm just not used to it but uh it was a great time and uh i was uh really uh and savannah richardson who works for the town went with me uh and so congratulations to these kids at beach elementary school Yeah, and the competition was if I were mayor, they wrote essays. And so and I was ready to hand the job right over to him. And that's the end of the mayor's report. So now we're down to resolutions and ordinances. First one is ordinance.

Mayor, did I ask that we have a five minute break before we get into all this? Sure. Unless there's been two and a half.

Yes.

Okay, fine. Five minutes.

Also, Mr. Mayor, it might be good to let people know that Ms. Rajan's movie is able to be watched online if they haven't seen it.

Okay. Say that again louder into the microphone.

The Young Ladies documentary is able to be watched online. What's the name of it again? When the Trail Meets the Tide? Is that correct, Ms. Rajan? Okay, so it is able to be watched online. I was able to look at it. It was really good work. No, we should have shorter meetings. Shorter meetings? Shorter meetings. Exactly.

I know.

Let's go. Let's start right now.

Let's go right now. We got to wait for a councilwoman and a town administrator. Councilwoman is back. You can come sit here. All right. We'll go ahead, even though Similia had to go back to the back area for a moment. uh next we have a vote on ordinance 0-26-8 an ordinance of the town council of chesapeake beach maryland amending the town code chapter 290 zoning article 5 dimensional requirements section 290-19 tables requirements exceptions subsection g to alter the requirements for permissible fences and subsection j to clarify the location of front yards on corner lots um Is there anything you want to say about this?

I gave the presentation on what the purposes are earlier, but it seems like there's some remaining questions, so I'm happy to help answer those.

Council, questions? What was the date that we wanted to have the prior to under non-conform offenses section A, lawfully existing construction constructed prior to, was that February 2026?

I believe it was March 14th, March 19th.

That's what, yeah. That was the day that it was. Dan, do you remember? I think we said.

The day it was introduced.

Right here it says February 4th. Whereas meeting in February 4th.

Well, that's the town planning commission. Yeah, I'm looking for the day it was introduced.

It was the 19th council member Jules is correct of March.

I mean, we're just picking a date in the world, just picking a date over there, but we're also, I mean, we don't even know what we're There's a whole it seems like there's a whole list of problematic fences that were not even discussed. There's no supporting documents that show it. There's no items that show what is and isn't. There's no list of disputed items that gets recognized. We don't have established fence lines to address the items of wood fence If you have property lines, is this a grandfathered fence line or not a grandfathered fence line? Is this a unresolved issue that people are trying to get resolved? Is this somebody outside the property owner that did something? I mean, there's so many unresolved issues with this that I don't think this is a very...

There's more problems with this than I think there should be. well my my question distinctly is based on our last meeting when we talked about when we were going to have this grandfather back into we talked about not doing the 10 years but having to go to a particular date to move forward from so i just need to know what that date i would say march 19 2022 that was the date the ordinance was introduced that's what we talked about i intend to make a motion to make it effective today second

but we gotta first move to approve and looking for a second. Move to approve the ordinance, looking for a second. Okay. Okay, now we discuss. I'm gonna make, I move to amend the ordinance by striking out, let's see, what is it? It is. B6B. g6b one two and two g6b one yeah yeah offense will be considered a section is non-conforming fences um It says offense shall be considered lawfully existing if and then I think that it should just say if it is existing if it was constructed in completeness as of May 21, 2026. OK, so also the so that would strike out one and two, three would remain provided that does not constitute a safety hazard or public nuisance.

Hold on.

Can I get a second for just a second?

Second for discussion discussion, right?

So it would read lawfully existing fences constructed prior to May 21, 2026 shall be exempt from this subsection, provided that it does not constitute a safety hazard.

Sure, that works.

But he said B and that's where the that's where I see. So a is that a lawfully existing offenses. Yeah.

So B would be offense shall be considered lawfully existing if it was constructed in completeness as of May twenty one twenty twenty six.

So I just have one question for the attorney. And I'll have it after all amendments are made as well. Is anything in this ordinance saying that it is legal to construct a fence a right-of-way, either public or private? No. Public. What about a public right-of-way?

So, as we discussed earlier, the fence ordinance only addresses fences constructed on a person's property. If you're saying, can they construct a fence over a right-of-way that transverses their property, that question would be determined by the terms of the easement itself. Generally, they prohibit construction, but this ordinance doesn't address that.

So by creating this ordinance, which doesn't mention it, and saying things are legally if, are we now legalizing that?

You can't. You can't create a right to do something in contravention of a recorded piece.

OK. So any legalization that we've been

Sorry. 4 addresses this. 4 and address this. Fences may not restrict access to any right-of-way or easement in favor of the town or a public utility.

Can you speak up a little bit?

Sorry. 4 says fences may not restrict access to any right-of-way or easement in favor of the town or a public utility. Any fence constructed such that it restricts access are subject to removal by the town without compensation to the owner or replacement by the town. Now, B sets up a provision to allow the property owner in the town to enter into covenants to allow a fence to go over a right-of-way under certain conditions.

Well, that's not always the case. You're saying that... That you're not allowed to do that now or you're not allowed to do that in the future? That's not always the case right there. So we're saying that we're not allowed to do it anymore?

No, you're not allowed to do it at all now.

So you're saying that if you did do it before, that was okay now? Is that what we're saying in this rule?

No. This doesn't say anything about things that happened before. We can't adjust by ordinance things that happened before. The ordinance addresses things that happen going forward. It can't fix things that happened before. However, a fence that transverses an easement may, according to the terms of the easement, be impermissible. And the holder of the easement, whether it's the utility or the town or another property owner, The beneficiary of the easement has the enforcement rights on that.

May I address Councilman Reinhart's motion, please? This is currently in discussion. If we keep A and put the March 19th date there and then Okay, if we keep the six a non-conforming fences lawfully existing fences constructed prior to March 19 2026 shall be exempt from this subsection except as follows and then we go down to B and remove To do you think that will still give you what you were looking for with the motion that you put in place? No, okay What do you want to make sure you're all one?

I? b1 is saying uh they had to have a valid permit all i'm all i'm all i'm looking for is a demarcation of today anything prior to that is grandfathered in um and that's it so if we remove one and two and b

but keep ordinary maintenance, repair, and nothing in this subsection shall prevent the town from ordering the removal or repair of any fence that has become unsafe or is otherwise not in compliance. If we remove that, then we take away... Do we take away their ability to...

The section two was put in there to do the grandfathering. And then, so what Eric is trying to accomplish is just to change the date, remove the 10 years and put a date. And his recommended date is just to say today.

All right, so are we removing A in that?

His motion includes A. My motion is to keep A and just have, and we're just talking about B being amended. One is removed. Two is removed and three would become one and it would say if it was constructed in completeness as of May 21, 2026, provided that it does not constitute a safety hazard or public nuisance. Okay. Go ahead.

Just from a drafting perspective, you wouldn't have a one. without a 2. So it'll just be a fence shall be considered lawfully existing if it was in existence on whatever date and does not constitute a safety hazard or public nuisance.

CHAIRPERSON WONG.

To say that if it's constructed over an easement, it can still be removed?

MR. That's in there. CHAIRPERSON WONG.

It already says that.

And can we add and can we add unless a complaint or motions for all these things? I just want to get this motion.

This is just my motion now.

And whenever we're done discussing, we just to be clear, though, for a are we putting a date in or is that going away altogether?

But the date is today.

Oh, for for a are we going to put this? You said March 19th. I just want to make sure that.

Well, it could be a different way. Let's do it. That is different motions, not part of it.

I just wanted to make sure that we weren't going to be working. We vote on it.

We're going to be right now.

Right.

We're talking about what be going to be OK. Do it again, Eric.

So B would read. Offense shall be considered lawfully existing if it was constructed in completeness as of May 21, 2026. Provided that it does not constitute a safety hazard or public nuisance.

Perfect.

Everybody got it? Yep.

So that's your motion for that?

Well, that's, yeah, and we're going to vote on that motion. We're going to go anywhere else. Yeah. Is there any more discussion on that issue?

I would like if that thing said, unless a complaint... has been previously made or objection to. So the nonconforming says you're allowed to have something, but what if somebody has complained about it?

That's not the motion. Okay.

That is not the motion at the time. Let's vote on the motion that's on the table. All in favor of the motion on the table, say aye. Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Now, go ahead, Dan.

I MAKE A MOTION TO REMOVE ANY AND ALL WORDS WALL FROM THIS ORDINANCE. IT'S ABOUT FENCES. AND NOW WE'RE TALKING ABOUT WALLS. SO I REMOVE MAKE A MOTION TO REMOVE ANY AND ALL LANGUAGE REFERENCING WALLS OF ANY AND ALL SORT FROM THIS DOCUMENT.

I'll second for discussion.

So this is about fences, and yet we have all throughout it garden walls and different type of walls. So now we're introducing a whole different contradiction in here. So if we have fences, let's talk fences. Why are we adding garden walls and all these other things to it? That shouldn't even be part of this entire thing. Sarah, do you mind?

I want clarification.

We are amending a section in the zoning code right now called Fences and Walls, and it addresses fences and walls. We're not actually changing any of the regulations regarding garden walls, steps, or other similar features. Those can't be more than three feet or higher at the floor level of the ground story, and that should remain because that's in your zoning code. we are adding regulations on fences and so all the wall references are just to g for the title and then in 1a to refer to the garden walls it's your current code and i recommend that you keep it because you have to clarify what a garden wall is versus what a retaining wall is um what are the definitions that then Definitions are in the definition section. I'm not sure if garden walls is defined in the definition section of your code, but I can look it up.

We're waiting to see if there's definitions in regards to it.

There probably isn't. Let's see. There isn't, and it's really because it's semi-defined in here, right? A garden wall is sort of a, has a common understanding, but also it says not more than three feet higher above the grade, higher than the floor level of the ground story. So it's a wall, it's a garden wall, right? So it's a short wall around your garden, but It has to be no more than three feet. Once it goes above three feet, it's no longer a garden wall and something else. But I agree that there are missing definitions in your zoning code.

So we're saying we're going to create a rule and there's nowhere to go with trying to clarify it.

we're not creating a rule the rule already exists that doesn't have this right here we're passing this ordinance and this ordinance references things and then there's no definition of the thing it references is that right but if we but if we remove it like it still exists in our code no matter what because it's already in the code so she's saying that that is part of the section so it's called out in that but it's no matter what happens it's still in our code we've been talking fences

for this whole point now we have walls in here i think that creates confuses so let's just remove walls from this and but then you would remove it from our code all right so i think everybody understands what the motion is remove all remove the word wall and everywhere that it appears in the uh yes in the ordinance i'm ready to vote if anyone else is all right all in favor of making that modification

Well, I guess I'm going to be the only one.

Aye. Any opposed? Aye.

Well, that's going to be out tonight, dude.

Okay. Now we can move forward.

I'd like to make a motion to add to 6A, lawfully existing fences constructed prior to. I would like the date for that to be March 19, 2026. Second. Second.

second all in favor aye i just want another little bit of discussion does that matter that it's not the same date as the grandfather date we just put in well that's why i was asking because in in a lawfully existing fences constructed prior to

ARE EXEMPT, AND THE DATE THAT WE TALKED ABOUT LAST TIME WAS THE DAY THAT WE ACTUALLY HAD THIS INTRODUCED. AND THAT'S WHY I WAS ASKING ABOUT THE MAY 21ST IN SECTION 2 TO MAKE SURE THAT IT WAS CONGRUENT. SO EITHER WE NEED TO KEEP A1 AND 2 IN PLACE,

So they should just match.

Because if the dates match, vote me down and then motion that in and we can move on. Agreed. So what is that date?

We're going to vote this motion down real quick and then have it done.

Right. All right. All in favor of the motion, whatever date you said?

March 19th.

Okay, March 19th. All opposed? Aye. Aye.

so that failed that failed and now we're going to make a motion to make that date in 6a so have we gotten rid of the 10-year thing hold on let him make his motion he's in the middle of a motion okay motion for 6a may 21st 2026. second We have a, what is this, May what? May 21st, 2026. Okay, we have a motion and a second. All other words remain as is. And this is something that you have brought up, Dan, so if you have anything to discuss about it, this is the time.

Anything you want to say, Dan? Yes, hold on.

So we have, we're all over the place, right? In trying to follow along with a document, I say the, if you look at the minutes in the home occupation and that, this is not the way to go about creating these ordinances. Trying to pay attention to the details, I mean, I object to how this is, and if this is going to go, I'll go through every word in these documents. These are not prepared. I don't know how else to say it, but I do not think trying to follow along, there's nothing here. It is not the way to create rules.

Any other comments?

I mean, you can abstain if you don't think that.

I'm not going to abstain. I'm going to make my voice heard. This is not the way to go about it.

That's a vote thing, sir.

You've had your moment. Anybody else on the council wish to say anything? All right. All in favor of that amendment, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. The ayes have it. He didn't say anything. Are you abstaining?

I'm not abstaining. I'm completely irritated with how this is going.

Whatever.

Whatever.

Is that a yes or no?

I don't know. I can't follow along. I don't know where we're at. I don't know where we're at. So why don't we take a memo and write it down because this is getting a little too complicated to follow along. Okay. I think we take that as a no. Take it as clarify. Can you please clarify where we're at? I can't follow along. The documents kind of contradict each other's.

It's either going to be yes, no or abstention. All right. It would be an abstention. I agree. Okay. An abstention. Okay. Abstention, Sharon. All right. Now we have this amended. Objection. How about that? Man, this is just. All right. State your objection. Okay. All right. Then we have a motion. We have an amended ordinance that we're going to vote on. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Aye. That's a no. Okay. So I'm not for whatever. That's a no vote. That is a no vote. Let's move on to the next one. all right ordinance number 0-26-3 ordinance of the town council chesapeake beach amending the town code chapter 110 building construction by repealing article 1 fences section 110-1 restrictions on construction reserving article 1 for future legislation Is there a motion for approval?

Motion to approve.

Second. We will have discussion after we have a motion. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Discussion? Dan?

An itemized list provided of all disputes that have been made and objections in cases to go for the record of where things stand moving forward before handing it off. Okay. I don't quite understand that statement. I think we should provide a documented list that laced all the disputes and things so we just don't cover up issues by some other rule that has all these indirect things. If there's known issues, it gets attached to this so we don't just bury it.

I don't think you would put a known in an ordinance.

It should be recorded with the repeal. If we're repealing it, there should be a record of what we're repealing. You got it. That's what we should do.

I'm unaware of any fence disputes.

I don't know either. I hear there's a whole bunch.

There are any that came to me or to you, Jay, to address.

vote all in favor of ordinance 0-26-3 signify by saying yeah aye aye opposed abstentions i don't know what you put down for yeah thank you sharon that's those decades of experience Let's go on to Ordinance O-26-4, Ordinance of the Council of Chesapeake Beach, Maryland, amending Chapter 257 taxation to add Article 5 tax credit for disabled public safety and surviving spouses and cohabitants. Is there a motion for approval? Motion to approve. Is there a second? Second. Discussion?

Yes. I thought we were going to be provided a cross-reference document that compared this to Calvert County's to make sure it was there. Is it being cross-referenced and it matches? And what part of this ordinance and Calvert County ordinance are different?

We literally walked through all this in the work session.

Right.

So, I mean, yes, it has been cross-referenced.

What are the items that is outside of that?

No, the only thing is just we matched the county. That was what we were trying to ensure that we were doing is that we matched the county.

Any further discussion?

Yeah, I just want to make a comment, explain the way I'll vote. plan to vote against this because of the same reason that I've been saying about this since we started looking at it and discussing it. I just don't see it just doesn't make sense to me why if we're giving a tax credit to someone who's disabled, I think that's and has difficulty paying their tax bill. I think that's admirable, but I'm not quite sure why we are creating a narrow reading or additional qualifications to only apply to public safety and law enforcement. I mean, if someone is disabled and they're disabled and unable to work, I think that's the justification to pass something like this.

I mean, I think that's a very fair position to take. I would just offer just one thing is that this is 100% disabled from like a line of duty incident. So they were injured in the line of duty. It's very similar to like veterans who also get a different in the sense legally, but the ideal is very similar for 100% permanent and totally disabled veterans also get property tax exemptions.

Sure, but so do other disabilities that are permanently disabled, like Social Security disability and Board of Education disability and all kinds of other things get tax exemptions too.

Yeah, and I think the framework that we could have introduced with this is what you're getting at. I think if we were going to do all this, putting this in work, there's a better framework for it to happen. And I think that's why I think I'm with Eric, is we could have done... It's too narrow focused and it should be a general thing before we just add pieces together and piece that together. So that's why I'm not for this.

Let's also say that now that you put up anything to say that we can do this for Board of Education or for anybody else. We're talking about it because of this, but there was nothing that had been put up in front of us with any different framework to take care of anybody else who may need those tax credits. That's just a statement. That's not true. I've been mentioning this the whole way through the process. Mentioning is one thing. I think that you guys have a great idea. If it was in front of me like this, I would vote for your ideas. That's what I'm saying.

Any other discussion?

I just want to say that willfully risking life and limb is something that people do that not everybody does and that we need people to do. And so I'm very happy to record those people who have risked life and limb and have actually had you sacrifice that with a tax credit.

Any other discussion? Just please let this be the last time, Dan. Go ahead.

Life and limb. I think she was clarifying things that Eric was saying. The things that I'm saying, this framework could be more than what it is. I think the work we've put in here, just passing this, we're missing an opportunity for this to lead to what it could be. And that's where I think we're missing the opportunity.

Okay. Any other comments? Go ahead.

You are limited in the tax credits you can grant by the things that are provided in subtitle two of title nine of the tax property article. of the state code. And so this tax credit for the surviving spouse or cohabitant of a bond law enforcement officer rescue worker is a specific provision 9-210 of the tax property article. There may be other exemptions for other types of disabled people and we can do a separate tax credit for that, and I can give you a list of what the permissible sections are, and we can, you all can collectively address it.

I was the first to have that list, thank you. Framework that this has, I think the framework to this is, is the, I don't know even if how that would be, but somehow this has the framework that we could use to spread out. So maybe making a motion to amend that, I don't even know how we would do that, but something to record the framework for this to be the guide forward. It would be more... More inclusive? Yes. There's something about this that's more than just about today's, I mean, I think it's four or five people, but there's more to this that can help more people than, it's just a little, I don't know. I don't know how to say that. It's...

It could be much more than this. I just want to interject one last time that we can move forward. I agree with Councilman Reinhart and Councilman Duvall. I think with the framework that we use to put this in place and with the list that ELISA can get us, then we can start looking at making sure we do things for other people as well, okay?

All right. That's where I was headed. All right. Let's take a vote. All in favor of this ordinance signify by saying aye. Aye. One opposed. Thank you.

I said aye.

Yeah, Eric said no.

My thing is that there's something here that can be used to follow in the future. So hopefully we can have a follow-up document A TEMPLATE OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT TO BE FOLLOWED?

NEW SPEAKER I'LL HAVE TO BE INDIVIDUALLY TAILORED TO MEET THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE INDIVIDUAL EXCEPTION IN THE TAX PROPERTY ARTICLE. FOR EXAMPLE, THERE IS A SECTION ON ELDERLY AND VETERANS. IT HAS DIFFERENT REQUIREMENTS. I mean, the ordinance will look something like the one you just adapted should you decide to adopt that one, but it won't look exactly like it.

It's not... Is there some framework for elderly?

It's not a plug-and-play, yeah.

Okay. All right. Do something for veterans. All right.

You don't have to do anything for veterans. There's something there. It exists at the state level.

Okay. NEW SPEAKER P. MOVING ON TO ORDINANCE O-26-9, ORDINANCE OF THE TOWN COUNCIL CHESPEEK BEACH, MARYLAND, ADOPTING THE ANNUAL BUDGET FOR THE GENERAL FUND OF THE TOWN OF CHESPEEK BEACH FOR THE FISCAL YEAR FROM JULY 1, 2026 TO JUNE 30, 2027, SETTING MUNICIPAL TAX RATES. NEW SPEAKER P. MUCH TO APPROVE.

NEW SPEAKER P. SECOND WITH DISCUSSION.

NEW SPEAKER P. DID YOU SECOND? NEW SPEAKER P. YES. NEW SPEAKER P. OKAY. DISCUSSION.

yeah i have a couple of motions that came from dan as well but if you want to go yeah maybe i can yeah do you want to see if this one covers it or do you want to go first well you go first so we have a printed out copy to follow along with or what I mean okay hold on hold on I asked before the meeting and I said I would do this during the work session I asked to see what motions based off the conversation needed to be made because somebody has to make the motions to match what the treasurer had to change based off the conversation so I asked and said that I will make the motions on behalf of the council and then we can sit here and decide if we want to vote

So you're going to follow along with a piece of paper, and I've got to try to figure out where we're at in the thing. I think we should all have a piece of paper to follow along with. I don't even know if it's supposed to be that way. We can't follow along.

You have a piece of paper to read along. You read the paper. Jeez. We need to smoke his balls. Jeez.

I have one motion to amend that has not been discussed in work session so if we can just knock that one out and then yes perfect okay I uh move to amend the um general fund budget by adding an exhibit a And that exhibit A would be the salary projections for fiscal year 27. Second. Discussion?

Okay, all in favor of the- Hold on, I'm trying to follow along. Well, I asked if there was discussion.

Yeah. Yes, ma'am.

These are available. Which is.

Yes, sir.

It's this document.

So this this. And.

There is an additional recital. At the end of section one. Listen.

Yeah, he's good.

Have I adopted before? Here too.

the information set forth in Exhibit B. Does that make sense? I'm sorry, you couldn't hear me.

You know, people can't leave your mics on. I don't know.

I turn it off because sometimes I'm saying things that ought not get recorded so i apologize um the the suggestion for the reference to the exhibit is the annual budget for the general fund of town of chesapeake beach for the fiscal year 2027 is hereby adopted and the form is set forth and attached exhibit a here too which is the existing section one and i'm proposing that Councilman Reinhart's motion be to add a reference to Exhibit B at the end of that Section 1 to say something like, and based on the information set forth in Exhibit B. Yeah. At the end of Section 1. Where it says, in the attached exhibit A, year two. My proposal for his motion was that it's A. And reliance on the information set forth in exhibit B.

So what you're talking about is an exhibit that is somewhat or exactly like the one that the county puts forth?

No, it's the file that we were given of salaries.

Oh, that contains names.

I'm just wondering if that's important enough.

Names because like the document such as this is included in the typical document.

us asking for anything but it is unusual well i was going to make a motion to remove the names and put job titles there instead um after we got it in so that they can't be there but it won't have the names there so if that works then we can move that's my mission yeah um can we would it would that be allowed to have it being a

provisional template. So is it the document that it is or the template for it? Well, yeah, I mean, I guess that's. Where do we stand? One one additional item to in support of that is that the information would be available to people if they did a public information request for the disclosures so we are just being transparent and offering information because we have failed to follow the ordinance that has been outlined before not just us but everybody else we're just the ones that talked about and now it would be part of the general fund budget which is

accessible online yeah, but without a request for Okay.

So I will just say what I plan to do, just so you're aware of the part of this discussion. I am not in favor of the names as well. I do, because this is the general fund, I do like the idea of publishing this under the titles as well. And if somebody wants to do a PIA request, then they can do that to get the specific name associated with all that. It's pretty obvious of who certain people are, because the only time you're going to get comparative ones is when you get into the specific public works person one, two, three, treatment plan person one, two, three. So.

I guess if that would be the case, then it would be, should be the entire, entire Schedule A that Sharon does. So it would be the true value so that we would also be able to see that.

I don't know what that means, but.

I can explain what it means.

Okay. But what I'm, I'm still just, Eric, all I'm just letting you know is I'm in support of this. I just would, I would probably vote this down to make a motion to change, to include this, but make it with job titles and not, not names.

All right. We have the ordinance. We have an amendment to the ordinance that's been approved by this council. Let's vote on the amended ordinance. We're still voting. We're voting on the proposed amendment. Oh, okay. Well, I wrote that down. All right. Let's vote on the proposed amendment. All in favor of the proposed amendment. And let me read what I wrote down. You tell me if I've got it right. It just put after in section one at the end of the sentence, after the word here too, put in reliance on the information set forth in exhibit B.

And exhibit B is the salary projection document, Excel document. Salary projection. But that doesn't go into the ordinance, right? Well, we need to define what the exhibit is. Yes.

Right.

Okay. So we'll be okay with with in your motion taking the names out so that we can do it all at one time.

My motion's already been established. I can't change it at this point.

Okay.

All right. There's so I'm just going to write the word more here and hopefully somebody's got this written down what it is. All right. So let's vote on the amendment. All in favor of the amendment, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Aye. All right. Two opposed. Aye. Three opposed. Three opposed. Okay. So the amendment fails.

Lori and Anthony and myself. okay the amendment fails are we gonna so i yeah i'll make a motion again i want to follow i'm not going to repeat all this up i would like to follow eric's exact motion with the exception of instead of names we would swap those out for positions okay the same thing it was exactly what laurie just introduced so instead of names we would put duty titles or positions whatever whatever the terminology is i agree with that too

I don't have I let me second it first and then you can just get it.

All right. Discussion.

Go ahead, Lori.

What it says or anything. I know there's a framework for this. We obviously don't have it right now, but it public like this in the way that we need it. There's nothing stopping us from publishing something like what the county has with their budget outside of the budget, but I don't have whatever you guys are looking at in front of me.

I'm going to agree with you on that. I'm going to rescind my motion.

um i move to add to maintain the structure of the previous two motions and duplicate the jamie's motion exactly that's easy for you to say you got that sharon it is the same so everything's the same section one verbiage is the same we're introducing an exhibit So she can see it. And in lieu of the names, we will substitute titles.

So we're discussing something, what we should do at a public meeting without disclosing what we're discussing to the public. Is that correct? The attempt here is to disclose the information to the public. The template that we're going off of in a public meeting, we're not making available to the public. So we're referencing something that the people in the public aren't able to understand.

The motion would make the information public. Well, I think the discussion makes it public.

All right, so let's go on. I mean, do we have a clear understanding of what Eric is proposing? Yes. And did we have a motion and a second? Okay, so let's go ahead and vote on the, no, did we vote on the amendment? Okay, all in favor of the amendment, say aye. Aye. All opposed? Okay, the ayes have it.

You got three, and you got an abstain.

Are there any abstentions? I just can't tell how we're going to do this.