Town Council - workshop

I'd like to call to order the town council work session. Note that all council members are present. If we could stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, please.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation,

All right. You have your agenda in front of you. And the very first thing that we're going to talk about is an ADU discussion. Sarah?

Hi. Good evening. So you guys can hear me okay?

We'll look closer. We need to get closer.

I want my state law right here. So we've been working on updating your ADU legislation to meet the new state law. And so there's a lot of moving parts and a deadline of October 1st. And we now have before you all of the moving parts in one place in ordinance format. Thank you to the town attorney. And so because what we want to do is introduce this at the next meeting, I think that we should go through each section and answer any questions to make sure that the language everyone is comfortable with is in here so that the ordinance can be adjusted accordingly. prior to introducing it. So I'm going to kind of just go through it directly with you all. And so we start just the top portion, 290.11, that's in there already. That's just sort of standard text that you have. So to get to the meat of the changes, we're in A1A. which is just saying that the primary dwelling must be occupied by the owner of record, the beneficiary of a trust owning the property, or an immediate family member of the owner of record. So this is saying if you're going to have an ADU on your lot, then the primary structure has to be owner-occupied.

Would you like us to kind of comment at a section at a time, or how would you like to do comments and feedback?

So if you have concerns or questions about this specific feature, if you guys can, if we can discuss them now, and then go to the other features one at a time.

So I guess the... How is that lawful? Is that lawful? I guess it's an attorney question. So is this violating anybody's property rights for us doing that? I know that this is what I said personally. You know what I mean? So I know that it's what I understand. So is it allowed? Is it legal?

And the state of Maryland's, Maryland Department of Planning's guidance allows it? Yes, it is legal otherwise.

And so that's for the permitting of it, or is that for the occupancy of, how does that go when the person sells the property?

So the rule will still apply. It continues to apply to the property. In no time can you have a primary dwelling unit that's going to get a rental license if the primary dwelling is not occupied by the owner of record, a beneficiary of a trust owning the property, or an immediate family member of the owner of record. You can sell the property, and that property can be rented, but you won't get a rental license for the accessory dwelling.

So it's the income-producing portion of the property, and that's the only part that we're putting the stipulation on is...

So I would say that if it's not owner occupied, there's two income producing portions of the property. So if you are the owner and you want to produce income off your property, then you live there, you own it, you have an ADU, you rent it out as a long-term rental, and you're producing income. If you're a developer or someone speculating on the land and you purchase the property and you want to rent out both of them, that's not permitted. if it was allowable.

So my thinking behind this, I think I was the one that maybe brought that up. Maybe it was more than just me, but I know that I had that. So my thinking is, and the intention behind what the legislation was, was to make housing more affordable for Marylanders. And so that's what was my thought behind that. It wasn't to make it more affordable for corporations and businesses and investment portfolios to purchase it. It was for the individual and individual rights. So that's what my thoughts were behind it.

And this supports that. Any other questions, concerns? Okay. Let's go on to B. This one is just mostly state mandate, but also the standard we're going to use for measurement. So the maximum size of the accessory dwelling unit may be no more than 75% of the square footage of the primary structures above grade living area as reflected in the records of the Maryland State Department of Assessments and Taxation. That is there so that the zoning administrator has a clear way to determine what we're talking about when we say size, 75% of size. And we used above-grade living area because that ties to the bulk, the visual size of the ADU that you're seeing on the street. Does anyone have any questions or concerns about that?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it can be quite big. And unfortunately, the 75% is state mandated. So even though it can be quite big, we have to allow that size. Later, there is a bedroom requirement that is meant to try to mitigate that a bit. Okay.

I didn't read the state legislation as saying that you had to allow 75%. I did read it as a no more than. So I read that as you can allow 75%, not that you had to. I'm not necessarily proposing a change in that because I believe each lot still has to comply with the Standards of lot coverage, is that correct?

Correct. Okay. And this was a debated point, right? I initially was reading it the way you were. MDP wasn't sure how to read it, so they had a lawyer interpret it, and our lawyer has interpreted it. Multiple lawyers that I work with have interpreted it the same way, that you have to adopt the state's definition, and that is what gets you the 75%. So to not do that would open the town up to legal liability. Right. You have to adopt to no more than that exact language. It's the state's definition that is later in this ordinance that gives that language. So it's just repeated here.

Okay. Yeah.

Sorry. You're not there.

Okay.

Any questions?

All right. Okay. So, item C is that the accessory dwelling unit must comply with all height, area, and bulk requirements applicable in the zone. Notwithstanding any provision in this chapter, to the contrary, a detached accessory dwelling unit shall not exceed the height of the principal structure. So this is sort of just defining some elements to keep the accessory dwelling appearing to be an accessory dwelling. Does anyone have any questions or concerns about that?

I'll tie that into the next comment.

Okay.

We'll go on to... Sarah, could you technically have an accessory dwelling unit that's wider than the principal house then?

I would say the bulk requirement, no, yeah, you could technically... Technically, you could.

I looked at a house. I could potentially see a second house on either side of it behind.

Well, you would actually very likely see part of the second house behind it because of the setback regulations. I mean, it would be a very skinny house. It would be a little strange. You could probably do it, but it would be unusual.

And again, if they are out of lot coverage.

If they're out of lot coverage, then that's, yeah, they have to comply with lot coverage regulations and setback regulations for accessory structures. Gotcha. Which is why you would see part of it, because the accessory structure setbacks.

You said out of lot coverage or lot coverage?

Lot.

Okay. Lot coverage. I've never heard about it.

Do we have a definition for bulk requirements?

No, that's... It's really related to design elements, which there are some design elements in the code that could be applied.

So I find these type of general statements to be problematic, and that's the thing that we spend a lot of energy cleaning up, trying to do something that's vague in description. I oppose these type of things that don't have definitions associated with them.

There's an understanding of what bulk means in the land use context. Developers know what it means.

So are we doing this plan for developers or are we doing it for property owners to make housing more affordable for Maryland? I think it's based on the homeowner. to individually build. So I think if we're going to have something, it should be so the everyday person can understand it and it not be vague in description.

So the property owner, even though you are individually going to be building this ADU, you're still going to need to employ an engineer to draw plans for the accessory dwelling unit. So you're going to employ someone who understands what this means. And that's really where that's coming in. The bulk requirement is largely met by the 75% and the height in the area. I don't see that having to be applied frequently from an individual homeowner standpoint. I can certainly see a developer trying to maximize that size. And that's why the owner occupied helps with that.

You say the zone, you're talking about like residential village one and two, those zones?

Yes.

Okay. So could we add something like the applicable zone or something to help clear that up a little bit at all?

So it says in the applicable zone. The way that I would generally wind up applying this is if something came that was like out of character, right, with the primary structure. and the other houses in the zone, this would be applied. Again, if it was going from setback to setback as an accessory structure, that's going to be not really meeting the bulk requirement.

Is there like a table or something where those requirements are? Like maybe we could reference that with the code?

one code. So there is a there is a table of dimensional requirements that addresses lock coverage, high setbacks, etc. We that but the the bulk, I really think how that would wind up getting by is if someone comes in with something really On the one hand, I don't know how you get something that's feeling bigger than the primary structure with the regulations we have. So if the concern is there, do we necessarily need it? On the other hand, if someone does find a way to create something that is looming, even especially because you have the properties that back up to each other, and so this house can be... 5 feet from each property line and so if you're in a two-story story structure and you put in the adu and That's also two-story, but behind you it's a one-story and a lot of small There can start to be some issues with bulk when you get into the neighborhood And so we might ask them to step down from that rear lot line or make adjustments there The bulk refers to the the size of the thing

And it typically is used to convey a sense of massiveness. And I don't know that the Chesapeake Beach zoning ordinance, I defer to Sarah on this, right now has requirements in it that in addition to height and setback, which sort of define the building envelope. But that doesn't mean that it might not in the future. There are jurisdictions that talk about Massiveness especially in so Annapolis does for example and trying to preserve view sheds of the of the waterfront for example, so I don't Dan I don't to alleviate your discomfort. I right now. It's referring to height and width and and and the situation of the Building on the lot relative to its neighbors I

D Is that the primary dwelling shall conform to the town's parking requirements set forth into 9020? Notwithstanding any other parking requirements the contrary set forth in this chapter Accessory dwelling units must have two off-street parking spaces not including those required for the principal dwelling Unless a waiver is granted pursuant to paragraph three of this subsection no required parking may be provided on any unpaved portion of a lot So this is not the waiver section. It's the parking requirement section. Does anyone have any questions?

So, yeah, probably a decent amount on this one. So in October, I first started discussing stormwater management. We talked about it at the last meeting. Since then, I've reached out to the county. I've talked to them. cascading effect the inspecting of our infrastructure for our stormwater we're we're not we're not doing inspections so we can't say what our status is of our stormwater um requiring more impervious surface without an understanding of what our current status is. Now, the county says the county itself is good because they've been able to assess the impact on how it is there. We have not.

So what our parking study did assess was the impervious surface impact of upgrading all the streets to allow on-street parking. So it says someone in an accessory dwelling unit, a large portion of the time, is going to require a vehicle. Not all, but most are going to require a vehicle. The vehicle is going to need to be parked somewhere. And the roads in the town are very narrow. And so leaving the accessory dwelling unit individuals to park on the street can create safety issues and access issues for ambulances and fire trucks. And so that is why we determined that the parking requirement should be maintained.

But... If there is a problem for fire and emergency throughout in town, as per shown in your list, avoiding and not addressing that is a thing. Expanding the roads, we can't do that without going through Calvert County because they're the one who administer... our stormwater management plan. They're the administrator to our stormwater management. So where we propose to widen roads, we have to go through a certain process.

So I think you're talking about solving the off-street parking, right? Can we solve the off-street parking through... We're even proposing it. Right, but I think that because we have a deadline that we should focus on the situation we have right now, which is that right now the roads can't accommodate... additional parking and so that's why this is in here and I guess the question is does the that's the council support leaving it in here and do you all feel that the the roads can handle the additional streets it is your decision to whether to leave this in or not but we advise that you leave it in for the reasons I've presented

Because there's a mandate from the state or because it's too much of an issue? Because I asked in October about the stormwater, and we haven't addressed it. So what are we advising?

This isn't about the stormwater. This is about accessory dwelling.

Impervious surface. I'm discussing impervious surface.

But we're talking about accessory dwelling units.

Correct. On the parking, that's impervious surface.

Yes, parking is increased impervious surface.

What's our assessment of our impervious surface in our roadways? What's the assessment on that?

The assessment that was done as part of the parking study was that for the town to provide the parking would increase the impervious surface much more significantly than for individuals to provide the parking on their lot.

So I was asking, what's the condition of our impervious surface in the stormwater management plan as outlined?

That's just not part of the scope of this ordinance or the work we were able to complete in the timeline of this ordinance. Certainly that's something that the town could look at adding to the work plan and then adjust this ordinance accordingly I think the question for right now is Does the council believe that allowing the adu Anyone who is occupying an ADU to park on the street, is that acceptable or is it necessary to require the parking spaces?

So the example I had given was the cascading effect of stormwater. So if you have 10 homeowners on a street, that all would qualify to say, if everyone in your neighborhood would qualify to build an accessory dwelling, and everyone did, the cascading effect of the impervious surface. Now, if you... In Lori's neighborhood, it probably isn't as big a deal as it would be in other areas of town, and not having that assessment is what I'm trying to ask, because the cascading effect, everyone applies for a waiver, no one grants it, us as a town has applied for the waiver, but the cascading effect of the stormwater management, has that been discussed? Because it

I think it's a question for the council to determine what the balance between the potential increase in stormwater runoff and the potential increase in vehicles parked on the road and how that impacts the road system.

So how would this impact existing ADU units? where the residents of the ADU unit parks on the street now? Would they lose their permit? Would the homeowner lose their permit to rent out the space until they produce paved parking?

I would say that those are non-conforming. but we didn't address them specifically. I'm going to defer to the attorney on whether we need to address them specifically.

Do they have licenses? Do you know of units like this, and do they have licenses?

I do not. I'm just asking a hypothetical.

Yeah, I don't think there are any. There are certainly people with rental licenses, but I'm not sure, because all ADUs that were legally constructed had to provide parking.

I would assume that if they already had licenses, that they would be grandfathered is my assumption. But if they don't have licenses, then they are non-compliant and they should have had a license. And we have that problem too. A rental license is an annual thing.

I don't know how long we license them for off the top of my head. Is it a year, two years? I don't know off the top of my head. Two years. So they're not grandfathered per se, except, right, and a permit can be revoked if it's issued in error. So when you issue a rental license, they're supposed to be complying with all of the parking requirements and everything else in the code, and if you find out that they don't, then you would either not issue a license in the future, or if there was a huge problem, you might revoke a permit that's already been issued.

So I guess the item is, I think we're conflating two things. I thought we were discussing the structure itself, the building of the structure. So the permitting of the structure. So if we are putting that in with rental licensing, that's two different topics, I think. This is, I thought, for the structure.

This is for the structure, but you're... You may be renting the structure.

Correct, and that will be through a rental policy. But here, like on one, this is what I understood for you to pull a permit.

To get a permit.

You have to be exact, correct.

Yes.

For this one here, I hear we're saying this is mainly discussing rental licenses, which is not of, like that's a different category.

No. Sorry, I was going to say the question was asked about existing potentially non-conforming ADUs. So we're talking about a very, a small or zero number of units that may not have two parking spaces. And so we're not, we're really talking about their rental licenses if they have them.

So if your question is, they're not renting, so there's no enforcement mechanism through the rental licensing program. They just have this structure on their property that has a bedroom and a kitchen or whatever, and they're just, I don't know, using it for their guests or their mother-in-law or whomever, and there's no rental going on. Your question is, does that become illegal under this ordinance? I'm sorry. It's actually Eric's question. Sorry.

Right. That is the question.

So I would say, yeah, that probably is nonconforming. And I don't think it becomes a huge issue because of the rental license, right? Because right now it's just, you know, you're... Your aunt and uncle, when they show up, you're letting them use the house in the back, the little mini house in the back of your yard, I guess. But the minute it becomes something more than that, where you're going to have a real ongoing parking program problem, not just a weekend guest or the mother-in-law, that's going to be addressed on a going forward basis, not just through the rental licensing scheme, but also because a permit, issued now for an ADU is subject to the use conforming in the future to the requirements of this ordinance. We can't retroactively make it applicable to, again, except through the rental licensing program, we can't retroactively make it applicable to houses that might already have a mother-in-law suite or whatever you might call it.

I have one other question. Or not question, more of a comment. Essentially, again, it's a hypothetical, but I'm sure it's going to happen. Someone could have an ADU and there's only one person who's living there. And we're requiring two spots here. So I would just be a minimalist if we're going to have the requirement.

So can we put a pin in that until we get to the waiver?

That's what I'm reading right now.

Because it's a good point and we should discuss it. I am going to skip over E and F because they're not changing. They're in your existing code. And go to G, which is that only one accessory dwelling unit is permitted on a lot with an existing primary detached dwelling unit provided it meets all other standards for accessory structures. Does anyone have concerns with only one? Unit being allowed.

Oh, so it's one detached? Is that what we're saying?

Only one accessory dwelling unit, period. If you wanted to have two apartments in your home, you now are looking at multifamily. It's more of like a multifamily situation and would be regulated under that.

I've asked this question before and I always mess it up. Is a shed considered an ADU?

Shed is an accessory structure, but it is not a dwelling unit unless you convert it into one.

And you'll see in the definitions that we've inserted towards the end of the ordinance that an accessory dwelling unit requires certain things.

So H is an accessory dwelling unit shall have no more than two bedrooms, one bathroom, and one kitchen. So you can't have two kitchens or bathrooms or anything. This is where you are having some control over the size. It still could be large. Are there any questions about that?

Okay. It probably is, yeah. I mean, it's...

I is accessory dwelling shall have ingress and egress separate from those.

There's an extra from in there. Yeah. Or the from is in the wrong place.

Yeah, from those of the primary dwelling. And that's a safety issue. So. Concerns about it.

How does basement apartments that are most likely treated as an ADU that are rented out throughout the county, like Calvert County, one thing they have is a bunch of basement apartments. It provides a lot of rentals throughout the county. People do fit-outs. I know so many people that I have. So by this thing, that doesn't count as an ADU.

No, it would be an ADU, but it would need its own entrance and egress.

But basement apartments that don't have that wouldn't be an ADU then?

They wouldn't be able to get a permit because they don't have separate— A rental permit. No. Any permit. Any permit.

So a home that has two kitchens, four bedrooms, four bathrooms— Two dining rooms, two living rooms, upstairs and downstairs, but that doesn't have the access because it's a split foyer or something like that, right? So that would be a single family home that had two kitchens. Is that what we're saying?

If there is an apartment in the basement, you will have to create a separate ingress or egress for that apartment from a fire and safety perspective.

So I'm talking about like today currently. I'm not talking about so today currently as a house since then October 1st comes and then that person has enough property to build an accessory dwelling that's detached.

If you're saying someone has an existing basement apartment that is properly permitted right now, but it doesn't have a separate ingress or egress.

And it's not rented. It's just there.

Right. Then it's not rented, so it's not an ADU. Well, it is an ADU, but since it already has a permit, we're not going back and saying, like, every ADU that exists in town now needs to comply with this. Those structures are what they are. As long as they were properly permitted and conformed to their permit, then they're going to continue to be what they are. It's when they come for a rental license, if they decide they want to rent it out, that they're going to have to comply with these regulations.

That makes it more clear.

Does it? Yeah. All right, then we will go to J, which is a detached accessory dwelling unit must be set back eight feet from the principal structure. So this gives some space between the main structure and the accessory dwelling unit to allow emergency services to move around in there if they need to. Any questions?

It continues to feel like we're having this designed for detached. So ADUs can be within a home and then detached. Most of these items seem like they're discussing. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I think I see what you're saying. It sounds like a lot of the regulations apply to detached ADUs and not to internal ADUs. And so to some extent that's true because the detached ADU has more visual impact on the neighborhood than the internal ADU. And so it has a few more regulations with regard to how it looks and how much space is around it so that the impact on the community from a...

character standpoint is minimized and and i appreciate i know how hard this was to put together i'm just working through it at the work session versus yeah yeah and and it's a most of there's there's a lot of trickiness to how this is put in um and we're trying to take it in stride you know

Is there anything that would challenge us from the state perspective where we're saying a basement can be an ADU? And since we're saying you can only have one accessory dwelling unit, so you cannot have a detached ADU. So would that still be...

If you have a basement ADU, you cannot also have an attached or detached ADU. Yeah, there's not a challenge from the state on that. You can limit it to one. You certainly could decide you want to do something different, but this is how we've drafted it.

I just want to make sure we're in compliance with the state.

Okay, yeah. Most of this is what you've been looking at for a month and a half now. Okay, and then...

I'm sorry. Oh, sorry. I want to back up to I... piggyback a little bit on Dan's point is it required is the state requiring this as the ingress and the egress or is this something that we've decided to put in

We've put it in, but the state does say that we need to regulate for health and safety. And I would say that the county isn't really going to allow an ADU to be permitted from a building inspection standpoint without separate ingress and egress, though I could be incorrect on that.

I mean, I understand the egress, for sure, from a safety standpoint. But the ingress is a little different. because there's a lot of situations where people, like you said, rent out their basement, they're a split foyer, or they may have a welled window in the basement for egress, but it's not an ingress, and you enter the house from the front door like everyone else.

And if there's an emergency and you're there, it complicates getting to you. And it can complicate you getting out, especially if you're talking about your mother-in-law climbing out a window in a basement. So that's...

I mean, if it's a legal egress, it's, you know...

Climbing out the window doesn't make it an egress for permitting purposes, I don't think. I don't think the county would say, okay, yes, you can have a building permit for this thing because somebody can climb out the window to get out. It has to have a door. And I think that's what this is saying. And we could change that to say it has to have a door separate from the primary dwelling.

Well, in building code, you know, illegal egress can be a welled window.

So I don't know exactly what the county building code is. having the separate ingress and egress is a safety, in my opinion, in the Planning and Zoning Commission's opinion, because they discussed this, is a safety issue. If, in the council's opinion, that you want to change this, then ADU is still going to have to comply with whatever the county building requirements are. But you can change this. This is for you guys to discuss.

Was the Planning Commission not talking about a door to the exterior?

They were talking about a door to the exterior, yes.

Sorry. We could just change it, didn't we? Okay. I'm sorry, guys.

That's my... Do you want to... Is that the council wishes to...

I'm good with that. Could you restate what you would change?

Instead of saying ingress and egress, because I hear Eric saying that egress is ambiguous in the sense that it could mean that you can no longer provide emergency exit through a window, which I think the International Building Code says if you have an apartment in the basement, for example, it has to have a window that can open. You can't lock the window so that the only the only ingress is through the door to the house or whatever because somebody, there was a fire, God forbid, they'd get stuck in there. But I don't think that's what this was talking about necessarily. My suggestion was that it say, and this is a council thing, accessory dwelling shall have a door with access to the exterior separate from

those are the primary for that of the primary dwelling is that is everyone like that idea i'm seeing so inside of certain homes where it's like just say one house and there's a common hall and then it's like a split house you know what i mean so that's that's one example um Working in D.C., I see different areas that are like a bunch of apartments that are kind of like a single-family house, and you're like, oh, wow, there's three or four different units inside of there.

So you're talking about a multifamily dwelling.

Well, it wasn't. It looked like a single-family dwelling, but over the years, it became that.

I was thinking the same thing. So say you walk into a home, and it's... Essentially, what is effectively a common vestibule.

Yes.

Interior, common vestibule, and then there's two doors there. Could those be considered separate ingresses?

Yeah. Yes, because they have a common vestibule.

How do we word that?

Well, because what you're saying is you're coming into a hallway. The hallway isn't part of either dwelling unit, right? So those doors, it's like an apartment building, right? Your door leads into the hallway and goes outside. That would be considered your access to the exterior.

I'm okay with the language.

Yeah, and that actually kind of comes. So if there is common area, common shared area, if we can put this in ADU and probably in the rental licenses and stuff like that, common area, right? So if you have a home and you're like, oh, my house is this big, I can put a wall up there, we can have a front entrance, and then this is your house, this is my house. Actually, my apprentice... him and his sister have a house that's kind of set up that way, right? They just purchased it in Montgomery County. So their house is sort of like that, and they have a kind of common entrance, and then his sister has half the house and he has half the house. I would kind of treat that area, that entrance area, almost as defined if you do have a licensing or a common area area description, so common area description of ADUs because The issue is we don't want to be uninviting for people to be compliant with the rental licensing that this inevitably will trigger. But we also don't want it to be hidden and them to feel like, okay, I'm designing a house to have an ADU, not to license it. And I know this isn't about the rental licenses, but it is in a way, too.

So I think we just solved that problem, though, by agreeing that because that center hallway you're describing isn't part of either unit, that that is exterior to the dwelling units. So if your door accesses on that area, it's a door to the exterior of the unit. And the fact that there's another door between it and the Great Outdoors doesn't change that.

And I think that there's another sort of another conversation happening here that is different from an ADU, right, which is more of almost like a duplex or multifamily that looks like single family. And I think that that conversation maybe needs to happen in relation to, like, The other pieces of the ordinance that we're going to be seeing coming in in October, I believe. And so if the council is sort of saying we'd like to see the ability for people to do some more creative things inside their single family home to provide more housing that way, then I can communicate that to the planning commission. And those would be different from ADUs.

So split four-year homes, right? A split four-year home has one door and it has half stair up, half stair up. If you put a door at the top of the stairs and close that in, that's a common entrance that doesn't look like it. You have a basement exit because there's mostly a slide glass door, but people don't use the slide glass door. They come in the front door. Having something in this ADU policy that would determine main entrances that are a common thing, I think are kind of in, if we could find a way to put that there.

I think, Alyssa, that's what you were describing earlier, right? Like if you walk in and there's an upstairs and a downstairs, a split foyer, and you have two different doors, your common space, like what she was describing, would be the same thing, correct?

Yeah, unless what you're saying, Dan, is, you walk in the front of what was originally a split foyer single-family home, and you've created a separate exit entrance for one of the apartments, but you're still walking through somebody else's unit to get to it, that would be a no.

No, the foyer becomes a common area. Right, exactly. The foyer is a redefined area.

Yeah, right, yeah. Cool. Okay.

So we are on, okay, yes, okay. Accessory dwelling units must comply with the town's floodplain ordinance, building code, and any other applicable regulations. Again, this is just in here because a lot of the people who are developing the ADUs are going to be your average resident, and it was important to the Planning Commission to provide a bit of a guide to the average resident as to what other regulations might apply. apply to them we have removed the water and sewer manual because we are addressing that a little bit further down in this ordinance are there any concerns with providing that it doesn't have to be in there just explaining why the planning commission wanted it i'd like to have if we're doing it where like where the other definition where i was like the balkan it's like oh well develops worse we're knowing that now we're saying this is for the common person i'd like to have it for the common person to know

what it is.

Right. I think it's the definition of bulk.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I just want to have definitions.

We can come up with a definition of bulk.

We could, yeah, we could do that. And then so the next one is an accessory dwelling unit is exempt from the calculation of density for the lot parcel or tract upon which it is located That is state mandated. So you might have questions or concerns, but we have to leave it No existing structure may be converted to an accessory dwelling unit if it has vehicular access only via an alley and that's

How do we – so if a house currently has just that access, right?

Mm-hmm.

Like, it has access that way. And us as a town have, from the list you gave us, a ton of them that way. And we gave building permits on one such example. How do we do that where we can give building permits and we say no on this? Like, I'm opposed to that.

This is saying you can't convert a structure that is already there. This isn't saying you can't build a new one and get a permit to build a new one. This is about converting what you already have.

I believe that this is in regards to impervious surface. So if the impervious surface, which most of our, there's a lot of roads, the width of them are the width of alleys. Just because it might have a name on it doesn't change the fact that it's an alley. So the name of it creates it, or is it the width of it?

I would interpret this as what meets the definition of an alley based on your road standards. I do not have up in front of me at this moment. This is meant to prevent where you have very narrow alleys and you have very small lots, and there's no parking on those lots. So the owners, so maybe you have two or three houses, and they're parking in the alley. And then you're going to convert an accessory structure and potentially create more problems So if you want to build a new accessory structure, we can work to adjust the parking and get all of that in place. Whereas if you're converting the accessory structure, then there's potentially more issues with parking and access. A lot of the other elements of this code really address that. And so whether you need this or not, I'm not certain. The state allows you to say this. And I'm not exactly sure every applicable part of it. I have felt that since the state allows you to do this, they had a reason for allowing you to do this. That does not mean that you have to keep it. You're allowed to do it. You can remove it if you wish to.

I was going to say, I think the challenge I'm having with this statement is, so you can't convert an existing, but you might be able to build a new?

Yeah.

It sounds like a, it just sounds backwards. I mean, I don't know.

I see getting going down the rabbit hole of our road standards creates a whole unmanageable situation. So I'm probably going to be moving to remove this.

Well, I think then, because we're in the work session.

Yeah, if there's consensus to remove it.

I would support removing it because I think that there's a lot of assumptions behind it and what those existing conditions are or will be that we don't know are true in every case. And it's been brought to my attention that you have to make an exit here fairly quickly.

So to, I better attend a meeting in Upper Marlborough, let me guess. So we need to... We'll keep walking through it.

Yeah, at 7, I have to be getting online.

Are we going to be able to effectively walk through it without her?

You have a very capable attorney.

I haven't been involved with the Planning Commission, so I can't tell you why anything in particular is here or not here. I can just tell you what it says and my opinion of what it means. So...

Well, perhaps if the council would be willing to... maybe make notes of what their questions are rather than express them verbally. You could quickly blast through the rest of these.

Yeah, if we want to move on to, if we kind of skip over the EDU piece and come back to that, because I think the town administrator and town attorney can handle those questions, and go to three that is about the parking waiver. So that says notwithstanding the requirements in section A, of this section for an accessibility dwelling unit larger than 650 square feet there's three options for a parking waiver one you have a street that's more than 28 feet in width in front of you and it's not a state highway and you're not already parking a bunch of cars on there two you are within a half mile of the mta transit stop in north beach and calvert county public transportation stop and your renter is not bringing any vehicles. And three, the lot is within a quarter mile of a municipal parking lot where overnight resident parking is permitted and the person in the dwelling unit, ADU, is not bringing any vehicles. So I think particularly the last one, like do you want people parking overnight in the municipal parking lots? Is that a waiver you want to keep? That is something to think about. And then, because we were talking about the maybe having just one person. Yeah, I'm seeing.

No, because you'll get other people in that lot that aren't complying with this particular clause.

You have to start giving them parking.

Yeah. I mean, I had a very complex and complicated Dormant by Design parking plan that I wish I would have been given a green light to go on. It would have addressed so many of these things because most situations won't be a problem. And to be able to have something in place so when it becomes a problem... We're burning a lot of time because the water park's going to open. There will be people parking on the side streets. Now we have the ADUs. It's a cascading problem that I believe we need a townwide parking plan that can go dormant and that dormant design so when there's problems and people who live on the street can complain and it allows for people that live there – to have available parking. And most areas are not a problem. Most people know where to park. Most people are respectful of their neighbors. But problematic people...

I think a parking study is something that you should discuss with your work plan this evening. I saw a lot of agreement that that should be struck, the quarter mile from... As a planner, I had to recommend it, but I, you know, thought you all might feel that way. So... So the next piece of the waiver is for small lots, which is trying to address the concern that you had about, you know, if only one person is living in there, then why do they need two parking spaces? So it's saying if your dwelling unit is 650 square feet or less, which is very small, then you can... get your parking requirement down to one space as long as it's a one bedroom which i don't know how you have a two bedroom with 650 square feet um so that waiver is trying to address that concern that was expressed earlier i like the one bedroom thing i think we mentioned that last time i remember um

I just forget where the 650 number came from. I think that seems a little low, in my opinion, and I wouldn't be opposed to making that 800. I just don't know where the 650, like... Is that the current code?

It's the current code, and it's the size at which, like, 650, how many people want to be crammed in? You know, that's small for a couple, right, where you have the two cars. Whereas 800 square feet, I have a neighbor who has an 850 square foot house they raise kids in, right? So it was more of a, at what point are you probably having two people versus one people, one person? A little bit.

Well, I actually do have a problem with the one-bedroom part of this clause because you could have a single mom with a child that wants to have a separate bedroom, but the child's not driving. So, you know, there's problems. And to make affordable housing for single parents is a pretty valiant effort, I would think.

I mean, yes, and if you allow the waiver, and this is part of the issue, right? If you allow a waiver for the one spot or even two spots because the person you're renting to does not have a license or only one of them has a license. Now, if that person moves out, now that can only be rented to that, someone who still meets that criteria, which puts a limitation on your rentability. And so it's something you can do. It just creates a slight enforcement problem and potential issues on resale. It doesn't mean you can't do it. It just makes it complicated.

And I see here we've very much blended. So if you have a parent who you want to ADU, but you're not going to plan on running it, then this doesn't apply to you. The waiver doesn't apply to you because you're not going to have a rental license.

Well, you can't get a permit anyway. So if you want to incorporate a waiver that allows... you to get the requirement waived based on the licensing status of the person you are renting to. I imagine it is something that the attorney can draft. It would need to, you would need to have a rental agreement with the potential, the future renter of the ADU before you could get a permit to build the ADU. And then if that falls through, now you have an ADU with maybe parking or maybe not parking, no? If you could build the ADU. Mm-hmm.

You can grant the property owner an ADU permit to build. They build it, but there's a condition on the use of the property.

On the UNO.

Just like when you have a variance or special exception with conditions. I mean, I'm sort of talking on the fly here.

Yeah, we're both talking on the fly here.

And we could do the same thing that we've written in here with respect to the requirement that if they rent it, the lease has to be on file. Right.

So I think there's a way, I mean... There's a way to write it. It just complicates things.

Yeah, because we're doing two things here. We're doing occupancy and rental. Like, occupancy doesn't mean rental. And we're doing a structure. So we're building permit, occupancy, rental. You don't have to rent a family. You can let family live there. You don't have to have a rental license there. So occupancy, rental, and building.

The person is paying you. You don't have to charge. You're renting it. Right. No, that's true. You can let somebody live there.

And they would occupy that place. That occupancy, rental, and building, that's all three of them things are converging in this. It gets complicated, and I think we're creating more of a problem. Like, it's... That's...

So I would say if the council wants to create a waiver for that, then that's something that the attorney has said can be done, then it can be added.

Can I ask a question?

Probably not right this second, but before the next meeting.

This might be a dumb question, but I'll ask it anyways. There's a lot of assumptions built. There's a lot of... possibilities that are built in this, and I think we're going to miss on a bunch, and we might hit on some. As part of the process, if somebody builds an ADU and they only have the space for one parking lot, can it not be built into the rental program that you can only have one vehicle authorized, and that really becomes a condition of your rental agreement? Because there's apartments where you rent and you get one spot. That's it. And if you get parking somebody else's spot, you get towed.

That is essentially what we've done here with the waivers as they are written. If you all change that, for example, to meet the scenario that was just outlined, but that's essentially what we did. We said if you're getting one of these waivers and you're renting, then when you get your rental license, you're going to have to give us your lease, showing us that you told your tenant they can't have a car there.

Yeah, but did we... But then we have like in here, like when we start getting into the size of the ADU and all that, could it just be as simple as you are only allowed to rent based off the parking spots that you have? instead of all this, because there's just, I'm following the conversation. I just think we're trying to like solve a lot of these little problems with a scenario. And I think at the end of the day is, again, if you can build a large enough ADU with the right amount of parking, then you can have two. And I know that's going to come down to potential restrictions in the future, but I mean, that's your lot size. You got to deal with the restriction of your lot size.

It is going to create a lot of enforcement issues for staff, so I will say that. And then I do need to leave you because I have a public hearing.

I like the idea that you want to simplify it and clean it up, and I really think the best way to do that is just change the base requirement to one, and then you can get rid of all the exceptions.

I think that could create parking problems. But if you get a family and there are three cars.

Can I ask, okay, can I ask one more question? Because I think there's still, and I know you've got to go, Sarah, so I'm going to ask this on your... You can still ask the question.

I know we're going to...

I think there's a lot of questions we still got to solve with this. If we don't resolve this and it goes for the next council session, right, it doesn't get put to the public, we would miss the October date. But even if we do miss the October date, I would assume the state is so busy right now that they're not going to come slap our hands for being three weeks late? Is that a...

Unless someone applies for a permit to build an ADU.

Somebody rushes a permit in knowing that you're about to adopt something that's going to prevent them from doing what they want to do, so they rush a permit in.

Well, currently, it's more restrictive than this.

Okay.

So what it would be is they would put in a permit request for an ADU, and I can only hold off on it for so long. I have to review it. I'd be reviewing it under the old regulations, which aren't compliant with state law, which creates legal problems.

Then maybe part of the conversation is we do need to have a special meeting to push this through, and so we hit all the right checks, but... I don't know. I'm kind of struggling that we'll lose you because you've been very informative throughout the conversation, and I would hate to put this on Alyssa to answer. She can only give us a legal perspective.

I don't know.

That's up to the council collectively, but I worry about... trying to vote on something this significant without finishing going through, and we just have concerns.

I'm in support of that.

I think we would just need to have, at the next work session, we would have to finish this conversation at the next work session, and then to ensure we hit the right timelines, we would have to have a special session to get through, or whatever the timing needs to look like.

You are suggesting meeting the timeline, because Sarah has expressed concerns about not meeting the timelines.

Yeah, adding an additional meeting on our calendar or however we need to do it the right way.

You could add an additional special works, right? You could keep your meeting where it is and just squish a work session before then.

We would just have to do one where we would do just a special one for an introduction because it's the introduction that it would just need to have ahead of time for work.

No. I know you've got to go. We can figure this out without you. But the challenge is we do have two council members, myself included, who will not be here next week. So that's why.

So I will just say, I know that the zoning ordinance is different, like an emergency ordinance, but then the zoning ordinance has more time. But could they pass it as an emergency ordinance and would it still have, I think it still has enough time from the zoning ordinance because it doesn't take, to still work. My recollection is this jurisdiction does not have a restriction on enacting zoning ordinance as an emergency. I think some people do that, right?

And if that's the case, then yes, you could just shorten the time.

So to your question earlier, that would be to still hit the timeline, but we would need to have either a special emergency session to allow us to continue the conversation and make sure we're getting Sarah's feedback and we're all comfortable, and then we can vote and push it through that process since we would not meet it through there.

We would have a work session to our next council meeting to finish.

Well, there's two, like Eric and myself won't be here at the next work session. I mean, you guys can, but I think that there would need to be another session, maybe in September, the September work session, and then we would have to have... Wait, so what you...

What's the date in October it has to be in the books?

October 1st. Now, if it's sitting and it takes effect on October 5th, right, if someone puts in a permit on the 1st, I'm not going to get it reviewed and ready by the 5th. So I can review it under past. As long as you have them passed by the 1st, even if they're not in effect by the 1st, I can at least start the review of a permit.

So could we get comfortable enough with this, what they have right here? And put it on the work session all the same to amend.

Do what we did in the last rule stuff where we make amendments to the.

No, it would be implemented. And then if we felt like we wanted to amend it because we had to get something in place.

You are going to have another crack at it because coming back with the land use table in October, right?

As it stands, this isn't going to go into effect until October 8th if it's the September 17th meeting.

Yes, and so I'm going to have to review anything that comes in from the 1st to the 8th. I'm going to have to review under the new codes but not issue that permit. Eight days is too fast for me to issue a permit anyway.

Sarah, I know you're here.

Council meeting coming up on the 20th, you guys won't be here. Your next council meeting is on the 17th. We can, if you get a work session in before September 17th, so that we can introduce you.

Do you have a work session scheduled for September?

September 8th. Talk about it at your September 8th work session. Get a special meeting in before the 17th just to introduce it. And then, because that's all you have to do. And once you've talked about it in work session, we should be able to turn it around for you, assuming you all come to agree.

Yeah.

Get an introducible version, and then you vote on it on the 17th, and we shorten the time period. But through an emergency, to put it into effect, it will be in effect.

Could we just extend? Could we close the work session and do another special session after the work session on the 8th? So then we would have both.

You could, but if you're talking about on the 8th, I don't think we can wordsmith it while we're sitting there to get you a document.

Ye of little faith.

Second Tuesday of every month is my Upper Marlborough Council meeting at 7. That's why I have this conference.

I need you to move to Chesapeake Beach. We'll build an ADU in the backyard.

We can email her our questions and concerns in between meetings as well, so we can hash out a lot of this.

Well, but the problem doing that is those are individual comments. It doesn't get you consensus. Whether the whole counts, right? Right. I mean, yes, you can get your questions answered that way, but we can't make a decision that way.

Well, I mean, I'll throw out here something wild, but we could do a live edit session where we just edit it in real time, but I don't know if that's legal. Nope.

I'm not going to vote on it that way. I'm a no vote on it. I don't want to do it that way. I don't, I didn't like we did it like the way we want to see the ordinance.

No, no, no. This is the work session. We would all come to concurrence on what we would add. This is not what we were doing before. This is to edit what, yeah, this would be to avoid all that.

Can you move the work session so that Sarah can be, so it's not on a Tuesday so that Sarah can be there? Wednesday.

What's good for you?

My only conflicts are the second and fourth Tuesday, the second Monday, and that's it. Second Wednesday, not tomorrow, but I can do second Wednesday. Thank you.

Is everyone aligned with that?

Your session would be the 9th.

We do the 8th and the 9th to work session.

If that's what you guys want to do, but that's not what I understood the suggestion to be. I understood the suggestion to be to move Tuesday's work session to the Wednesday. You're not going to be here on the 9th. So that would not work.

That's the 10th.

I'm at a MML board retreat. I think we could solve this without you. I know you've got to go.

Because these are just dates.

Yeah, you've got to leave. Public hearing. I'm really sorry.

Thank you, Sarah.

Thank you.

I just want to make sure I'm being clear. Whatever date we would move it to, we still have to have an additional special session that allows time for edits. And then we would agree to introduce.

Well, you could do an emergency ordinance on the 17th at which you, if you made it an emergency, you could introduce and adopt it that same night and shorten the time frame.

Okay.

I was just trying to find a way that you could not squish the introduction and...

No, no, no. I think then the emergency route is the right way to go because we have to be in compliance with the state so we don't put ourselves in this weird... How is something so long would be an emergency?

Like, it's so long away. Why are we getting to say it's an emergency?

It's an emergency because it has to be adopted by October 1st.

But there's been so much notice.

Is there a reason why we wouldn't finish this up as a work session tacked at the end or the beginning of our town council meetings? probably the end. And then you need four yes votes. So if we know we have four yes votes, that's any day after at any time that we announce to introduce it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't know how much we need. It's not going to be perfect. My question would be is what aspects of this can go to the Board of Appeals? So, like, what I wrote down, and I know there's not here, but if you have a basement and you have a single-story house, which I do not have, but people do, that basement, you want a basement apartment, but it can only be 75% of the top. Right. They're now, like, can that be addressed in a variance, or because it's one of the standards, the dimensional standards, the voter could not.

I'd have to check and see whether your variance language

Well, I mean, as a variance. As a variance, right? Yeah, I mean, I think that would be a logical variance, but it would be up to the Board of Appeals. It wouldn't be a given.

Yes, but in the variance, remember that in the variance process, the person shows certain things, and I think the hypothetical you just outlined would be hard to show that, which is that the property is subject to unusual conditions not shared in common WITH MOST OF THE OTHER PROPERTIES IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD. THERE'S A, YOU KNOW, ENFORCING THE STANDARD AS WRITTEN WOULD BE AN UNREASONABLE HARDSHIP OR UNDUE BURDEN, DEPENDING ON HOW THE ORDINANCE IS. SO THEY, EVEN IF YOU ARE THEORETICALLY ALLOWED TO GET A VARIANCE FROM THAT REQUIREMENT, I'M NOT SURE A PERSON IN THAT SITUATION COULD get a variance consistent with the law on variances.

Right. So that would be my main question for all of this, because if there were situations that we could say, well, this pot of weird situations could be covered by the Board of Appeals, but this pot couldn't, that would clarify a lot of things, because otherwise we're just going to keep going each year, finding these little offshoot scenarios. which each and every single one of those is never going to be perfect for any code that we write.

Legislatively, the idea is that you make a policy decision about what's generally best for the community. And yes, that means some people are not going to be able to get 80 years. That's just the way it is. And And I'm just saying, I don't know that the variance process is the steam valve that you're looking for. It could be. I mean, there could be an unusual circumstance, especially for a detached unit, right? An interior one, maybe not. But you could have a situation where somebody had steep slopes on their property.

I guess generally that will be my question. Is there a way to take these eaches and have the valve that people are looking for? Because we can't go down each each code for each. Right, you can't. Because then it will change.

I think having a... We're mixing a bunch up. So we're talking a detached, attached. So if it's an attached unit and it doesn't have an entrance, that's just basically a roommate. And so there's no regulation or anything in place because if they don't have a separate entrance, then a person's a roommate.

Then we don't have to address it.

Correct. But then if they have a... All intents and purposes, a basement apartment, but it doesn't have all them things. It's just a roommate. So you can have a roommate lease, and we don't have any say-so on that. And that's one thing, and there's a lot of places like that. Then you have a... Like, this would be nice if there was a detached section and an attached section. Because we have ADUs, and we're mixing up rentals, we're mixing up detached, attached. Like... A basement apartment or apartment above a connected garage is one thing, but a detached unit is a different thing. So I think we're doing a lot here that's missing, that's getting confused.

I think Alyssa had something.

If you had a roommate and you were renting a basement apartment that it would be covered, in my understanding, by your rental license?

Not by my understanding. Mr. Mayor? Mr. Mayor? How you doing, man?

I'm ready for a nap.

Is it possible that we can get to our Board of Appeals appointments so that they can enjoy their lives?

Before we do that, not to speak for you.

She's about to speak for me.

No. There really is a, Sarah did cover the majority of this ordinance as it exists. And the portion that she didn't cover, I was going to speak to. So I would like to just put that before you because the reality is if we can get some version to introduce, I think that you've really talked through most of the larger issues. When it comes to these smaller, maybe I would categorize them as like secondary. Revisions, I think this that's something that can be covered when you discuss the land use table because to Councilman Duvall's point like there are things that could be made clearer I My personal perspective is that you don't need to hold the whole thing up until it's perfect because it's going to take a long time to do that. So I will move as quickly as possible because I think this part is probably the most straightforward and speaks to some of the challenges that the staff has seen in trying to navigate the code as it applies to real-time residents who are looking for solutions.

Go ahead.

So item 2 the following provisions apply to the allocation of water and sewer capacity to accessory dwelling units a accessory dwelling unit shall be allocated and charged for equivalent dwelling units or edu's for the purposes of the town's water and sewer system in accordance with the following schedule Those accessory dwelling unit sizes less than 500 square feet would be assigned equivalent dwelling units of 0.25 EDUs. Accessory dwelling units 501 to 1,000 square feet would be assigned 0.50 EDUs. Accessory dwelling units sized 1,001 to 1,500 square feet would be charged 0.75 EDUs. And that should be 0.75, not 0.075. and those larger than 1,500 and one square feet would be charged one EDU. Item B, detached accessory dwelling units that are 1,500 and one square feet or larger and accessory dwelling units that are located on a lot of records separate from that of the primary dwelling unit must have capital connections to the main water and sewer lines in accordance with the provisions of the town's water and sewer manual including its provisions related to fees and charges. And so these were, as Josh shared in previous meetings, it's important that we are capturing the water usage as it pertains to ADUs. And so that's why the recommendation is to apply fractional usage. And we would only require additional capital connections under the guidance that's listed here. So if it's large, so larger than 1,500 square feet, because that could I'll sensibly be a single-family home, and if it's on a lot that already has multiple subdivided aspects to that property, which exist already within the town, and the comprehensive plan also has plans to adjust. also proposes addressing and encouraging people to combine lots that have already been subdivided in the past. So that is the staff's suggested approach to making sure that we're not unnecessarily penalizing people who want to create affordable housing by requiring that they connect, that everyone connects, but instead says, if you're building something that's 1,500 square feet, or 1,501 square feet, you do need to have that connection because what we don't want to find, or we don't want to venture into the land where developers get this and then say, okay, well, we're going to, you know, buy this now and then sell it later, and it doesn't have a connection. It just becomes a nightmare when you're trying to administer that. So that is what the staff has presented as a solution for that.

I like the framework of this. A couple of suggestions from the conversation. The .25, maybe the 650 square foot, since we sort of put that as a... Don't we have a 650 as a benchmark measurement?

We have 650... 650 is what the current code is.

Yeah, so... Like, I like the quarter credit there. The... The item with the cascading percentage, so if we're capped at two bedrooms, if we're saying the two bedrooms, right, like I could see the two bedrooms doing the .75, the one bedroom being the .5, but the 75% of the size, maybe the 75% of the size triggering the one.

Depending on what the size of the primary structure is, though, right?

Yeah, but, right, so the 75%, I think, is the way to probably protect better. Because if it is for where somebody wants to maximize the size, it's like, I mean, you're going to have a whole bunch of people have two-bedroom, 1,100-square-foot that doesn't trigger it, but 75%. 70 to 75%, something like that.

Or structures bigger than X, if it's also 75% of the primary structure. Is that what you're saying, language like that? Because I see your point. I think if you just said 75% solely, that's not going to capture, it's going to capture people that you don't want it to capture. I think if you're saying over a certain square footage, if it meets the square footage and is also 75% of the, primary dwelling, that might be a way to apply that. I don't think you could replace it with just saying 75.

Right. So if you have 1,000 square foot, you're 750 square foot, that would be 100%. But in this one, it would only be a half percent. It would only be one bedroom. A one bedroom, a two bedroom. Yeah, I mean, I think Some version of that? It's some version of it. And how is this going to go with... So otherwise, so the quarter of the percentage... The only thing I see that cascades is this. Does this define what an EDU is? So a 3,000 square foot home, is that two EDUs? Like, how does that get determined in TRAN?

So when it comes... Typically, with single-family homes, they're one EDU unless they have applied to be a part of the rental program, in which case they get assigned an additional EDU because of the water usage and the requirement and the water and sewer manual for them to have a separate account for their renter. If they're just building the ADU and not renting it, they would have their primary dwelling as one EDU, and then depending on the size of their accessory dwelling unit, they would have a fractional EDU assigned respectively.

So this would make it a fixed with or without a license?

This would be what it would be without a license.

the building of the structure.

Are there other questions?

I was just saying I kind of agree with the 650 for the 0.25, 650 and above, or under 650.

I believe that that is a... Since I don't hear consensus on that, I think once it's introduced, that could be language that you motioned to have changed. And then if there was a vote and the council aligned, then you can move forward. Otherwise, it wouldn't move. It wouldn't pass unless, Alyssa, you see it. I agree. I think they'd have to have a discussion and someone would move to amend.

Yeah. I agree also. So that's three there. Anybody else?

What, change it to 650? Yeah. Sure. 500.

There's a consensus.

It's close, but it would just line up with the parking.

I mean, I don't...

It's not a big difference.

So less than 650, you're saying you want that to be .25?

I just don't see any, I don't realistically see an ADU being under 500 square feet and having somebody live there. That's like pretty small, I think. 650 would be more realistic, I think.

So with that, the last page is definitions. So if you guys are comfortable with the discussion as we've had it with Sarah and where we are now, I would suggest we introduce it.

I think the only, I'm good except for the only thing is where we were pausing and we started to go into the, we needed maybe have a second. Regarding the waivers. Was the waiver. So if we just quickly agree, and I think Eric had said, well, let's just make it one parking spot. If we go to one, then we just see which of the waivers I mean, we already nixed the waiver three because we didn't agree with municipality parking. And then there's just two other waivers. Do those still stand or not stand? And then I think we probably have the answer there. Go ahead, Alyssa.

Consensus on that municipal.

Yeah, there was consensus to strike it. Yeah, just doing the one parking spot. John wants everybody to park at the water park.

I was about to say, I don't even know where municipal parking is available besides right here.

Do we have consensus here? Go to one. Change A1B.

Yeah, that's what I thought. Yes.

You said A1B. All the way back up, yep.

A1.

Excuse me, I'm sorry. All ADUs, only one spot?

And then it gets rid of all that mess.

subject to the rental license.

The rental license can require it, but it would be they only have to have one parking space.

Are you saying you're going to write into the rental license that they have to have two?

If their occupancy or their tenancy requires I don't know. How are we going to do that?

Back to the conversation around apartments. So if I build an ADU and I only have one parking spot, when that person goes to rent, it is a requirement that they know that they only get one parking spot assigned to them. I know they can.

Yeah, so that's fine, but I thought I heard her saying that there were circumstances in which you were actually going to require two parking spaces.

No, no, no, she was just saying it's validating it would be resolved via the...

Yes, okay, the enforcement, yes.

I don't know if that's what she was saying.

Well... You're saying... With this whole thing, I... I have a problem with what the state has done to us. And so when I look at this, I'm also thinking about protecting the people that live in the neighborhood that exist as it is. And so I don't have as much need to create situations for the ADU as much as I have a need to create a manageable situation for all the people that are already there and also allow some ADUs to provide the housing. So if requiring the two parking spaces is something that is needed to manage parking in the neighborhood, I don't mind that being a requirement because there will be some ADUs that

provide the housing that you're talking about for the single right you know and all that i think what we're trying to accomplish here though is if we mandate one you don't get into these weird waivers but you do get into as part of the rental where we can resolve it is through the rental licenses have a requirement of you only have one spot like just like an apartment building or you only get your one designated spot you can't give somebody a house and they show up with three cars

Because that's where we're at with the rental program. We've got pretty much all that in place, but the ADU portion of it, that's where we're waiting to bring it back for the council for this. So the rental program, I think, is where we can fix this item, and we don't have to put it in the structure of the ADU policy.

I don't mind keeping it in the structure, but I recognize that I may be outvoted.

Whatever you put in this ordinance about the number of parking spaces required for an ADU is the number of parking spaces required for an ADU, and you can't then go amend your rental licensing statute to have a conflicting requirement. If you all are comfortable saying... You only have to have one parking space. You're not going to be able to do anything about them having three cars. Those cars are going to end up on the street. Okay. Well, then that changes.

That's why I think maybe we could just enhance the waivers a little bit to make it a little easier to have one spot.

I mean, knowing all of that, which I had already assumed, I'm still for changing it to one.

Yep.

Yeah, I'm good with going to one going to one Beautiful one that's for consensus Changing D to one space and we were getting rid of all the waiver stuff getting rid of item three under a

I don't know if you don't need those waivers anymore. We don't need any other waivers. If you're getting rid of the, because you still just have to have at least parking.

We have one parking.

Right, because that one space is already in addition to the spaces that are required for the primary. So it's not like you're saying you can have 17 cars there and only one space.

We can put that in, no 17.

Does that mean we can get rid of three in its entirety? Yeah, right? Yep.

Can we do this instead? Can we leave three as it is until we've had a chance to align with Sarah? If there is a reason that planning and zoning still suggests that we have a waiver process, I would rather leave it intact and then motion to take it out.

I'm okay with that.

Okay.

OK, so I'd rather take it out and have them come to us and say if they want to put it back in, because like we already got consensus on the one spot. So why are we going to keep a waiver that doesn't even apply?

I'm just highlighting the fact that there may be things that have been discussed in planning and zoning that are tied to the waiver process that I am not privy to because I don't sit in on all the planning and zoning meetings. But Sarah is. And I would like to be able to align with her before I say, let's go ahead and remove it. Not that it shouldn't be removed, but that I would want to talk to you about.

That sounds good.

If it does become, like, say we get rid of the waivers and people do end up parking on the streets and the neighbors complain, then it becomes an enforcement issue, right?

Yes.

That's for a parking policy that I'm trying to work on.

Let me just, real quick.

So it does say in 3A that these waivers... may waive one or both spaces.

So I've got to change that to just waive the requirement, the parking requirement.

Well, I don't know. If we want some of these in there, that will allow you to waive the one.

You've just changed. There now is only one.

Yeah, but this one would allow you to waive down to zero.

Yeah, it would, right? But still it's not one or both because there is only one. Yeah, yeah. So it's going to say.

But it would be an argument to keep them in because you could waive the one.

Yeah.

So, yes, exactly. You could waive it. Based on this discussion, I believe that we're fine to introduce it, that you all are fine to introduce it at the next council meeting, which is next week.

Yeah, I think because now based off of that, there's validity to the waivers. Yeah, that's a good point. We just need to change it to one.

We did. Now we'll say for an accessory dwelling unit that's larger than 650 square feet, a waiver from the parking requirement. may be granted, and a similar change to the one for less than six months. This is the live editing I was talking about.

All right. Okay. I'm glad we're past all of that. We're going to temporarily skip over item two. and go to item three. We have Larry Taub here, who has agreed to become the Board of Appeals Legal Counsel. If you'd come to the podium, sir. Introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about yourself. You have in your packet information. And welcome, sir. I'm sorry we didn't reorder that before you had to sit through all of that, but you see what we're doing.

That's fine. I certainly have seen this type of thing before, so I've been there. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. Good evening. It's a great pleasure to be here. Yes, my name is Larry Taub. Just real briefly, you've seen my bio there. I grew up in a small town in New Jersey, came down here. this area to go to college, and one thing led to another. I went to Los Cone, Ohio, but got back to the D.C. area in Prince George's County, and it's been quite a long time at this point. But I do have an affinity for small towns, I will tell you that. I've always enjoyed that. I've been remiss in not updating my bio in that from 2018 to 2024 I served as the city attorney for Laurel and in that capacity I also advised their Board of Appeals the last year. I also serve as the attorney for the Board of Appeals in Sykesville in Carroll County. And so I've got some experience. I've certainly represented clients numerous times before boards of appeal during my practice days. So I'm quite familiar with some of the issues, most of the issues that they'll be dealing with. I'm looking forward to it. And I truly appreciate the opportunity to be here and to help the town as I can. And happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Questions from the council?

I found your resume very extensive and I don't have any questions. I'm sorry about that. That's fine. I think you have a perspective from both ends that will be very useful.

Thank you. Clearly qualified for the position.

Thank you.

I think you'll do well. I think I've I spoke to you before on the phone one time, and I was surprised to see your name. I talked to different attorneys, and I thought you were very kind and very informative, and I look forward to that.

Thank you. Convince the Redskins to stay in Maryland. That would be great if you were on the new partners.

You know, after I went through that experience, my wife almost became a Dallas Cowboys fan.

Thank you, sir. Thank you. Well, thank you for your patience and thank you for coming in. Absolutely. Thank you very much. Thank you. And next, Board of Appeals reappointment of Amy Everett. If you would please come up and just share a little bit of information. You have the information in your packets.

Hi, good evening, Mayor, Town Council. So I'm Amy Everett. I think I've met most of you all before, but I've actually been on the board for the past three years. And so it's a little odd to reintroduce myself. I don't want to tell you, bore you with details, but I've lived in the town for about 16 years and I became interested in the town. Probably five or so years ago, I started getting kind of curious about activities in the town. So when the job came up for the Board of Appeals, I thought it was something that would fit into my lifestyle pretty well. I'm a busy single mom, so I can't do what you guys do. Thank you for doing what you do. But the Board of Appeals... But the Board of Appeals has worked really well. I think I'm a fair person. I think I'm objective. I love rules, but I also like to help people. So I think it's worked out really well. We've had several different cases of all kinds. Yeah. I think that we've worked really well to be as fair as possible To the appellants and work for the town to do the right thing I know not everybody is always happy with a decision that the Board of Appeals has but I think that that's not a role a role is to do the right thing by the Zoning and ordinances that are set in front of us So I like to look at all the pieces and come up with that answer as best I can so If you guys have any questions, please let me know.

Coming back.

I know you well now.

So thank you for coming back.

Sure.

Thanks for serving. It takes a lot of effort and time.

More than others, right? Yeah.

Thank you so very much for coming in, and we welcome your support and your participation. Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm sorry you had to wait so long.

That's all good.

Well, I mean, there was a lot to hear.

Did you do a motion?

I'm sorry. The motions would be at the regular meeting, not the work session. So to clarify, we'll at the next regular meeting, we will have a motion before the Council to bring these two people in. But given what we've seen tonight, I think it's a safe assumption that they're both be approved. Oh, and thank them for their patience. Alright, let's back up home occupation exemptions. Amelia, you got this. Amelia's got this.

So this one should be relatively straightforward because you guys are all familiar with it. Maybe that's famous last words. You guys ready? All right, so you have a memo before you, and I'm just going to read the top portion of it. The council is considering amending 209-11 regarding home occupations to accommodate a resident seeking a home business. Since the Planning and Zoning Commission originally omitted the word regulated in its proposal for 290-11, the Council can align the text with the Commission's original intent by removing this word without requiring a second recommendation from the Commission to allow state or federally regulated home occupations The town council simply needs to strike regulated from 290-11 CC1E and 2E as shown below.

I remember this conversation. I think it was something that got added because of the firearms and cannabis, if I remember right. And I think Dan motioned to add it to kind of help us with the consensus at the time.

So what I understood when I added regulated was that we were in a discussion and it was the compromise between the council. So the regulated was put in there because that's where the conversation moved forward to allow for the thing to pass. As much as Like, it might not be favorable. The item is. That's what got us to the pass on it. Pulling out words, the regulated on both items would have to come out. So, like, the regulated was to allow for more goods to be sold because there was no goods to be sold.

No, I think the regulator was specifically tied to substances and firearms. So we had a gentleman come here who talked to us and said that we are holding up his business. So I think also in addition to that, we've learned that you cannot have a business with firearms. And even if we pass this, you can't just go then open up a business to manufacture firearms. You have a, what is it? It's federally regulated. Correct. Same with like a lot of the, like Lori, a lot of the comments you had on the medical stuff. You have to have a lot of, like you can't just start. Selling marijuana out of your basement because we don't have regulated in there You'd still have to follow all the cannabis requirements in the state and you can't sell Can't sell hard drugs anyway, so it's illegal So I when we keep the word when you're saying like we'd keep the word regulated in there I would I'm actually I'm in support of removing this because I don't know what we're trying to regulate as a town That isn't already regulated through the federal or state

So I think the no article or commodity is offered for sale except those instant to the service, right? So regulated is no article. So that is less items that are available. So there's no items for sale.

Yeah, so we can fix – because this isn't what's being put forward, so that's a great catch.

We can just fix this because we still want to be able to sell, but it would just be – Well, this was – the regulated was to offer more availability to others. The regulated was to compromise is what I remember. Right. Correct me if I'm wrong. Like, it was something, like, Lori didn't want anything. Eric wanted something. I was like, hold on. I think this is the common ground. That's what I remember. Like, it wasn't, I was just trying to find a path forward.

Eric was saying you should be able to, which we all agree, you should be able to come. If somebody sells crafts out of their house, you should be able to go to their home and pick it up. And then the challenge was... If somebody's making firearms, should they be able to pick up firearms from the same house? But the answer to that is whether they sell it out of their house or they sell it, I don't know where you would then have to go to sell it because you probably can't just sell it on the street corner or drop off on the street. I don't know the answer to that. Eric, maybe you've got a thought.

Well, is the answer striking E in its entirety instead of just the word regulated?

But then you make it to where, again, somebody's selling something out of their house, you can't sell it.

No, you can.

No, you can.

This is saying you can have a home occupation except as herein provided.

No article or commodity is offered for sale on the premises.

I think we need to strike the entire...

If you strike the whole thing, then Article 3 of my ideas... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that you can sell, because it's not right here.

Yeah, yeah, okay.

As it currently stands, it says, accept those incidental to the services offered. So, presumably, if your home occupation was making whatever it was...

Yes, I'm tracking now.

...pot holders, you could sell them.

I am tracking that. Then you couldn't sell golf balls also.

Yeah, yeah. Right. I agree.

You sell what your actual business is.

Oh, no. It sort of would depend on what your occupancy is.

It's all tied to the premises. You can still sell it online. You just can't have people come to your house and buy it.

I think we're inside a temporary thing on this anyways, right? Isn't this coming back? I don't know if we should move this piecemeal move anymore.

I'm for striking E in both instances in its entirety.

If you strike E, just to be super clear, again, somebody sells potholders or makes golf balls, they would be able to... If you make golf balls, I could come to your house, buy a dozen golf balls for $100, whatever they cost these days.

Yeah, that's what – because if we only – the second instance of E, if we only strike regulated, then it would prohibit sale on the premises. I'm good with that as well.

No, I'm not good with striking the whole thing.

I couldn't hear it.

I'm not good with striking the entire thing because we don't know exactly what will be sold out the house then. If we're going to take away regulated, then we can have somebody who can fix firearms at their homes. But if we take everything out, then they can also sell more arrows. You got to have those things. But the less that we have in place... The more that people can move around and do other things that we got to come back in after later to try to fix or rectify once there's a complaint.

This right here, you still have to have the home occupation permit. So you're only selling what you're authorized to sell anyways. You can sell it. How would you sell anything that you're not supposed to be selling? I mean, if you do it nefariously, like, I can't hold you to that. I'm not the neighborhood police. But anybody could do that. People sell drugs all the time. It's not allowed. But if you have a home occupation permit, you're permitted to do that business in your home. Right. The only thing that this is saying is that you could still do that business and then sell the item out of your house, which we already said you could. The only difference would be regulated items, which would be. So what you're saying that is, is you are not in support of the like the guy with the fire like you can't sell.

So I'm not going to be selling one person because I'm not going to.

That's why I asked you what? are you saying would be regulated outside of a weapon that the federal government or the state does not already regulate that you would not be able to operate out of your house?

What happened was no article or commodity is offered for sale on the premises. That's where we were at in agreement. So that's where it was at. And I added regulated to allow more people to be able to sell the items connected to I got that.

So we're here talking now specifically about removing the word regulated. And then in order to still allow people to sell, you would scratch that entire line.

So the question comes back to is... We wouldn't have passed the thing then.

But it doesn't matter. You could still not vote for it. The question still comes down to is what are you trying to prevent from being sold out of somebody's house who has a home occupation permit? Because they have to be permitted. They would still have to follow state and federal regulations for anything that would be regulated. So what are we trying – like genuinely, that's what I'm asking. What are you trying to regulate?

I think we just don't want it to become like – 25 people coming throughout the day to your neighbor's house and buying donuts or crafts or whatever.

That doesn't have anything to do with prohibiting regulated things.

No, not the regulated part, but I'm saying if we struck E. No, the only thing this does is regulate it.

It's all this changes.

I agree with keeping the regulated struck.

I don't agree with striking E. But now you're back to Dan's point where it says you can't sell anything. So, because it says no, yes. You can still sell it. You can't sell a lot of home goods online in the state of Maryland.

Well, if nothing changes, you can sell anything in your home unless it's regulated by the federal government or whatever. That's how this is written now. Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah. Right, and you have a permit. Yeah. So that's already the way it is. You can already sell from inside your house, and people can come and go, 25 people a day. All we're doing here with the word regulated is prohibiting people who are in businesses that have federal regulations associated with them from having a business in the same manner.

So what if we strike regulated from the leaving regulated in the item two allows for people to sell? So on E, no regulated article or commodity is offered for sale on the premises. Otherwise, it's no article or commodity is offered for sale on the premises.

We just wouldn't change the code. The whole point of this coming forward is to allow somebody who currently has a regulated business to sell out of the house. We're not trying to go back and relitigate. It's just changing that.

Do you have a perspective, Alyssa?

To me, that does the opposite. You can have it as a conditional use subject to the requirements of the district where located, provided that no, let's assume you strike regulated, no article or commodities offered for sale on the premises. You can't sell anything out of your home. With the word regulated in it, and I'm looking at subsection 2 now, with the word regulated, the only thing you can't offer for sale out of your Home is a regulated article or commodity and other things could be offered for sale on the premises.

Correct. That's why I think the intent here of the council that is bringing this to the work session is not just to strike regulated, but to strike E in its entirety.

Then we're not making an opinion on what can and can't be sold off of that.

Correct. You're allowing goods and services to be sold out of a house, and it doesn't matter if they have federal regulations attached to them or not.

But I'll just be clear with that, though. Everything still has regulations. Like, my kids can't sell candy without state... Like, the state signs off on everything my kids sell, right? And this isn't just me, because they're fine already. They've always been fine. But, like, the kids have to report everything that they make in labels and certain packaging and everything to the state. That is home food business. Firearms, any of that stuff still has to be reported. So, again, we're just saying... We're just removing the requirement of the word regulated because we put constraints on people who have businesses in town that fall into that category because they're under regulation.

And like yard sales and lemonade and all that, that doesn't count because it's not a home occupation. Correct.

what the word regulated was doing while we were in that discussion was adding the ability for more people to be able to sell that were not allowed to sell correct and now we're coming back saying okay we did that but now we've had uh somebody come forward and then there's concurrence you know so we brought it forward to the council as a discussion item let's expand that allowed ability

But the question I have is... That's what we're saying.

Olly olly oxen free are... What are you saying, Council Member? Well, that's... I mean... The word regulated could be... The word regulated could be expanded to mean tax regulation. You have to report to the IRS your earnings.

It could. And we could create the solution with a definition of what regulated means. That's what I was hoping to get to, defining what regulated means.

Well, then, can you, instead of us going back and forth.

Well, I mean, I'm not the one that makes the agenda.

Right. We're in the work session.

Right. So my solution would be to define what regulated means. That's what I keep.

What is your definition?

I would be open to a discussion. Like Eric said, it could be taxes. What are we trying to regulate?

I'm trying to regulate anything. He's prohibiting something. What do you want to block? It's the same question.

I wasn't trying to block anything. I was trying to allow something.

So then you're in favor of scrapping Line E in both sections.

I mean, if we can do Ali Ali Oxen free, whatever.

I don't know if it's Ali Ali Oxen free, but it would be, yes. It would allow people to operate. As long as it's a legal business, they can operate in our town. Remember, this is home occupation.

I don't think it has the votes for it.

Why does 1E have the incidental services thing? Because we could just add that to 2, and then as long as it's incidental to the service you offered, then it's allowed.

Well, because you don't allow services on the other one. It's us relitigating the whole thing. It's a whole bunch of... I guess if we're going to remove the regulated, we remove it on both of them. But if we're going to take the E out, we should look at it as a whole because it changes a lot of items. I think we spent an hour plus at the council meeting on this, and I think we spent – I don't know how many hours in work session on this. Now we're back at it.

We're back at it to ask this question. So I guess we would ask a question.

With the ADU at hand, this is the time we're bringing this up. I think it's poor timing.

This came up because there was a resident.

Yeah, and per your 2027 resolutions, you want everybody who comes and speaks to us to have an opportunity to be heard by the council. And they're repeating right now.

Speaking of it. And they're not going to be guessing. I'm not. Speaking of it and giving someone an answer. Go ahead, Eric. Yeah.

So if we are concerned about striking it fully, I mean, I want to just be clear. It's just striking regulated. I don't think anybody wants to do that because that prohibits the sale of everything. But we could rewrite it to say an article or commodity is allowable for sale on the premises except for those incidental to the services offered.

I don't know what they're trying to do. We don't want to do it.

I don't. Council, questions real quick?

Are you finished? You would strike no regulated. You would just say articles or commodities are allowable for sale on the premise except for those incidental to the services offered.

That doesn't work.

You certainly want people to be able to sell things that are incidental offered, right? You don't want to break it.

Well, yeah, I would, but I'm kind of making a trying to find some middle ground here.

John, you were saying to take what's under 1E and then put it under 2E and just remove the word regulated? Goods and services.

Well, I think the issue is it was the services offered. So the services is what the difference between the two was. Because one, you're allowed to have services. The other one, you're not allowed to have services. All right. So we would make them the same.

I would ask from a legal perspective. I think you understand what we're trying to do. It's not clear, so maybe restate that. Restate what we're trying to do, and maybe if we can get the legal way of how this would be the right way to do it, if there was concurrence, is currently we pass the home occupation that allows people to sell in their home except for regulated stuff, which is like firearms and whatever else the federal government regulates or the state regulates. The question is, how would we remove that restriction so if somebody is allowed to have a home business regulated in nature by the federal government, such as firearms maker, whatever that's technically called, and they could do that? Because right now, that is prohibited.

If you strike regulated. You accomplish that because as long as you do want to.

In the first and second.

Right. In subsection one, because you've said you can sell things that are incidental to the services offered. So if the services offered are firearm sales, you can sell firearms out of your home if you strike that regulated order. It doesn't work so well for subsection two because it's missing except those incidental services offered, and I don't know why it's missing, and Sarah's not here to ask her.

And that's what Councilman Green said is to make that exact adjustment in the first condition and then copy it exactly like that in the second also. I think you had it right.

That's what John said. You make sure.

John, all right, whoever. Yeah.

How about this? So how about this? When Jamie's saying the federal government, I wasn't thinking we were going to regulate with the federal government. I was saying us as a town, what we as a town choose to regulate. Us as a town, what we choose to regulate is what we would allow to... be or not to be so one example i go to is like our critical areas we have gone through the process of creating our own critical area process and so we did the work for that and so we have our own policy for that For a regulated item, we would do the work for what is regulated. So if we haven't put the restrictions, so the federal government, the state government, they have alcohol, marijuana, whatever, all that stuff is regulated by them. If we choose to create a restriction, the regulation we do as a town is what I was sort of thinking that could be used as.

You aren't going to be able to do that. for most things. You're going to be preempted by state law from regulating things that are already regulated by the state.

And that answers itself there. That's a definition of that, right?

So by striking the word regulated and adding John's language, we would achieve that, as long as we have consensus across the board. And we need to fix this.

My only question now is, do we need to add goods and services, or does services cover everything? That's just the way it is.

Inc. Services covers it because the goods are the thing that you're selling associated with.

That's the article of commodity.