Town Council - public_hearing

His attention, the mayor is currently running behind, so we're going to wait for him to join us. He's reached out and said he'll be here shortly. As soon as he gets here, we will start the public hearing, the public meeting.

Okay. All right. Good evening, everybody. I'd like to call to order the public hearing for these three ordinances that we're considering. My apologies for being late. I've been up at Maryland Public Television all day today, and I drove furiously to get back on time. And I had forgotten that I was ready to be here at 6.30, but I had forgotten about the 6.15 public hearings. And besides, we wanted to make sure Anthony was here, so that's my excuse. Sorry. All right. The first public hearing is on Ordinance O-26-15, an ordinance of the Town Council of Chesapeake Beach, Maryland, amending the Town Code Chapter 290 zoning article.

And so the ordinance before you is compliant with all state, applicable state laws. It has been considered by you all for a number of months and what it will do is it will allow adus that are larger in size than currently allowed and it has a parking requirement but that's based in a parking study that was done it also addresses how adus will be considered with respect to the water and sewer allocations and i just want to let everyone know that these regulations, because they're state preemption, they don't just apply to future permitted ADUs. The parts of this that are flexible, like the allocations and the parking requirements, they're going to apply to any existing ADUs as well. So I think that is the summary of information that the public would want, but I'm happy to answer any other questions that you think the public...

If the public has any or you all have any before that public hearing Council members any comments questions I Heard that Anthony this is anybody from the public have any comments or questions All right, we will move on to the second public hearing I That is on ordinance O-26-16, an ordinance of the Town Council, Chesapeake Beach, amending chapter 263, urban forest, sections 263-4, prohibited acts and permits to limit restrictions on property owners and managing trees on private properties where their actions do not significantly impact the town's tree canopy. You might as well stay up here.

So you're looking at the urban forest, which is not a zoning ordinance, but I do assist the tree board in understanding that ordinance. And they wanted to make a few changes to that ordinance, most prominently to allow public works administrator to approve when I believe it's just one tree or maybe one or two I'm not as familiar with this because it isn't actually zoning come forward so that the whole tree board won't have to meet for the removal of one tree and I believe there's one other sort of administrative change I wanted to make

And Jay, can you add on to that, please? Thank you, sir.

Sure. So most times a citizen comes in for a premarital permit. There's a process the board meets. And 99% of the time the board, a tulip poplar on its own, has agreed to give them the permit anyway. So it's kind of an unnecessary process if it's a small enough tree and it doesn't meet other restrictions. So we're just trying to forego the bureaucracy of it because the board has said yes anyway.

So essentially what we're doing is streamlining the process.

If it's a small enough parameter, now I want to be clear, on multiple trees or if it's considered a bigger canopy and it has different effects, then we will meet. But on these, I'm going to say pool of poplars that are like telephone poles that have issues, there will not be a meeting necessary.

Okay. Does anybody in the public have any questions or comments that they would like to bring before the council with regard to this ordinance?

I don't think we had discussed this, or at least I don't recall it. I would imagine that this is a... It doesn't... Things like this is... We should have... definition of exactly what we're looking at. I'm not sure that... At the appropriate time, of course.

But I'd be interested to know why that automatic approval is in there. And... You know, if the permit gets lost and the tree board does not meet and it is for a large number of trees, there is an automatic approval to have them removed, and that is concerning to me. So if anybody can tell me how that got in there. Sue says it was not put in by her, so I'm interested in that.

No, I put it in.

And so there are benchmarks as the application goes through that if we get to benchmark number one and the answer is yes, then Jay can approve the tree being removed. If we get to benchmark number two, Sarah can step in and say, if we've gone through all these benchmark processes and there's still concerns about the tree, it comes to the tree board. Within the last year, Town Hall has implemented a new online system where once the application comes in, it is immediately registered in their system, and we, the tree board, automatically get a notice saying this permit is out there. So we've already started the 45-day count. Now I asked you whether it's 45. Right now it's 45. If you want to make it a different length, that's not, we don't have an opinion right now on that. That was just something that Melissa told us about and said it should be a certain period of time. Right, it's just a placeholder, basically. Yeah, to start. But we do have a clock that starts as soon as the application comes in, and we are notified. The board is notified immediately, so we know that we have to get something done within that 45-day period, and we meet once a month. So even if it came in the day after a meeting, we would still be meeting again in 30 days and hopefully meet that 45-day deadline. So we do know when the application comes in. Now, if something doesn't get registered in the first place, that's something that couldn't happen to anybody. But we, as a tree board, do know when the 45-day starts. and we're aware of that, and we have meetings.

I have no concerns about you doing your due diligence. I just think that things can happen.

Even a planning and zoning permit does not have as short a period of... Yeah, so if the discussion needs to be about $45 or $90 or $60 or whatever, we haven't even said that.

Yeah. Okay, if I ask her, of course, I'll be. So is it better to be worried about... this issue here and if we remove the word approved make sure that the process is that it comes to you and then give you a window of say 90 days to work on it does that work better or because I'm hearing what the issue is but I don't hear solved so I want to know what we should be looking at the way the process is working right now right we're good we are not um

We just want to say that we don't have to look at permits anymore for one or two trees. The original amendment that we submitted was simply to state that the tree board only looks at permits for three or more trees. That if one homeowner wants to take down one tree, have at it. We're not going to sit here and try to monitor every single tree.

And that thing all together is...

That was our original submission for the amendment. The 45 days has just come into the discussion since the amendment has been, our initial submission was submitted.

But there was a 45-day period in the ordinance. It said the tree board shall issue a recommendation regarding the application within the time frame stated in the notice or no later than 45 days. The problem with that is which of those things is it? It didn't say whichever is later, it didn't say whichever is, So that needed to be fixed, right? So I took out the, within the timeframe stated in the notice and said 45 days since that, right? And so since the 45 days was already in there, I just carried it forward. That doesn't mean it has to stay at 45 days.

That wasn't part of our initial amendment. All we were looking at was the one to three trees on the application. One tree, even if it's over 50 inches, it doesn't necessarily have to come before them. Yeah, that was the only thing we originally wanted to amend.

Right now, the way this is written, they can cut down up to two trees, even if they're over 50 inches.

If the town permits it. The town still has to approve. It would have to be a unique situation for one tree. For one tree. Gotcha. But just a standard tree, if they decided. Gotcha. But just a standard tree, if they decided it's dead, it's dead, it's too close to the house, they just don't like it anymore, that doesn't have to come before the board. Town hall and zoning can decide whether it comes down or not.

Great. Well, thank you very much for.

Town hall and zoning can decide whether it comes down or not.

Great. Well, thank you very much for clarifying. Thank you.

Mayor, can I add one thing to that? Yeah. Just because on Sunday when a chainsaw starts up in this town, my phone rings. So to be clear, you still need a permit. Everyone in town, if you're going to cut down a tree, you need to call town hall and you need a permit to cut down any tree in town. It's a matter of is it a kind of standard and it's already approved in-house or does a board have to meet? So I just want to be clear. If you're going to cut down a tree in town, you still need a permit. It's just a level of review. And what we're doing here doesn't affect that, is that correct? Correct. If you cut down a tree in town, you need a permit.

Yeah, thank you for that clarification.

Sure.

Anything else on this particular ordinance?

I would just comment that if we do not change that 45 days to something longer, if we do not remove that requirement of an automatic approval, that special tree that Ms. Alexander is talking about could be... filed in with a permit for 10, 12, 20 trees, and if the board fails to meet, the regulation says that that permit request is automatically approved.

Well, do you have a proposed amendment that you can introduce at the time when we get to that part of the meeting?

I will propose that, and I would be open to a proposal. I'll propose to strike, and I would, you know, that's what I'll start with.

That would be agreed to do when we consider the adoption of the ordinance.

If I may, quickly, I remember watching the tree board meetings, and it would be through the motions, and it would be one tree, two tree, and it would be, You know, everybody would have to go through the questionnaire, and I thought that the tree board introduced the two trees as it seemed like that was like the automatic approval process, and the three was what they agreed on. The one thing I wanted, if Sue would entertain us, is maybe put...

But, yeah, we can certainly bring that. In fact, I think there is something in the ordinance about three incidents... I think there is something in the ordinance that states three incidents within a certain period are considered one incident. Okay. I do think there is a clause in the ordinance that addresses that, but I'll go back. This will not change that, no. This amendment will not change that. That, no. This amendment will not change that. Yeah. I'll bring it before the board. We'll review the ordinance as it stands, and I'll bring it before the board. All right. Anything else? All right.

Let's move on to Ordinance O-26-17, Ordinance of the Town Council, Chesapeake Beach. Amending the Town Code, Chapter 290, Zoning, Article 3, Zoning District, Section 290-11, conditions and standards for conditional and special exception uses to permit the sale of certain items incidental to a home occupation. Right.

So, yes. So this is an ordinance that you all passed to allow home occupations earlier this year. And at the time, you added the word regulated, except those incidental to the services offered. And after consideration, the Believe the council decided they wanted to remove the word regulated from the ordinance And so that's what this is doing it means that any item can be offered for sale on premises as long as it is Incidental to the services offered next year Council members anybody got any questions or comments?

Planner could just state what we are allowing that is regulated as a home occupation for business?

In the proposed ordinance before us? Any article or commodity offered for sale on the premises that is incidental to the services being offered on the premises. And the scale is that A home occupation can be no more than 30% of the principal dwelling's floor area. So if there's a service, any item, incidental to it.

That includes firearms, as we've discussed. That would include firearms, yes. What incidental to firearms will be approvable? Customizations.

It depends on if there's a service, right? So if there's no service being offered, if you're just selling firearms, you can't sell them on site because there's no service being offered. You're going to be mail order or you're going places with them.

And again, if, start with if. I missed the first part.

In order to sell anything in a home occupation... the from your house like so people come to your house and purchase the item you have to be offering a service at your house so for example if you cut hair at your house you're offering the service of hair cutting and so you can sell shampoo and hair gel and i i get my hair cut but i don't i don't own a gun so i don't know what those items are So whatever it is that is incidental to the actual customization of the firearm.

I would like to just point out to you, and we brought this up multiple times, like in this ordinance, we're not changing what is allowed in the state to be a business. We have no authority to tell Maryland how they will issue any firearm licenses. That is all done at the state level. All we are saying is that if a business is allowed as a home business in maryland and in calvert county then you can have that business here so you still have to follow all of the regulations associated with the state and and i would point out i know laura you're very adamant about the firearms you know looking it up maryland is like the eighth strictest firearm firearms state in america so it's no nobody is going to be able to build a machine gun in their basement and sell it to the neighbor um but like They would whatever they're allowed to do under Maryland law as a home occupation business They would be able to do there. But all we're changing is that ability not We're not saying that we're not implying that Sarah can now build make guns like that is not in this at all if I can can so my my Concern is we are allowed to prohibit regulated items and regulated business

from entering into residential neighborhoods. And that's where we differ. The council has brought this back so that we could introduce regulated businesses, businesses that provide services and sell incidentals related to those services that are typically controlled Into residential neighborhoods, and I disagree.

Yeah, yeah.

That's what's going on here.

Yeah, and that's why I said, you know, later today you'll have your legislative authority to say yes or no, and you should leverage your voice. I would just argue that this doesn't change the fact that your neighbor could have X number of guns sitting in a safe in their basement. It doesn't change that at all.

So, you know, a neighbor and I— It doesn't change the number of people interested in weapons coming through a residential neighborhood.

Thank you. I had, um, one item. So I actually was the person who introduced the word regulated and inside of that, I introduced the word regulated. Um, as i was listening to my colleague and trying to find a path forward and so in the introduction of the word regulated mainly with the rv1 category was to allow uh because of original ordinance was no article to be sold i introduced the regulated to allow for more permission to be had and and that was the compromise After a long, lengthy discussion with the RV1, I also put it in the RV2. Maybe that was a little bit assertive of me to do that because I implemented the regulated in the RV2, NCTC, but the regulated within the RV1 was done to allow for more services to be provided, and that was the compromise in the discussion. So I'm not trying to make it too much on a public hearing, but if you recall how that was, if that helped.

I do recall, I didn't recall who made the motion, but I will just say that the impact of adding the word regulated under the RV1, RLD, RMD, RHD, and RPC is that currently any article or commodity that is not regulated can be offered for sale on the premises in those districts right now. So that's it. Only regulated articles cannot be offered for sale currently.

All right. Eric? Yeah, just one comment. Yeah, and if I recall correctly, the importance of the edit in RV1 is the addition of except those incidental to the services offered because that wasn't initially there. That changes the meaning of E. Right.

So now going from when it was first drafted and presented, you couldn't sell anything on the premises. So no one can come to your home and buy anything in those districts. The change that was made allowed anything that wasn't regulated to be sold, which is the current condition, out of your home. And this change that is proposed will only allow things to be sold out of your home that are incidental to services you're offering in your home. Does everyone, everyone's got that?

Okay. Thank you. Very good, Sarah. Anybody else have any comments or questions? All right. All right. We'll close the public hearings, and we will convene the town council meeting. If you'd stand and join us, we'll do the Pledge of Allegiance.

Pledge of Allegiance. Pledge of Allegiance.

Is there a motion to approve the agenda?

Motion to approve.

Second. All in favor, aye. Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Is there any public comment on any item on the agenda? This is your opportunity to come up and speak to the council about anything that you see on the agenda for this evening. Seeing none. We'll go on and work through our approval of minutes. We have the August 20th, 26 public hearing minutes. Is there a motion for approval? Motion to approve. Is there a second? Second.

Discussion. Go ahead. So I wanted a full council to have this. So when we made the minutes for our meeting, I'm sorry, my discussions for the town council meeting. Minutes. I guess I can, the discussion pertains to it. So I voted against the minutes and we had a 3-1 and we had two not present. So I was, I'm under the assumption that it was not a passed item when we are in discussion for the minutes, the previous month's minutes.

No, sir. That is only for when we are doing ordinances where we have to have everybody all together voting in one particular in unison for the four people that are here. Anything else on that agenda can be 3-1 and still pass.

All right. I think his question relates to was there enough council members present in order to vote and pass with a 3-1 vote? Yes.

Okay. Okay. All right. So right now, we need to approve the town council public hearing minutes. We have a motion. We have a second. All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Aye. The ayes have it. All right. Now we have the minutes of the town council meeting of August 26th. Is there a motion for approval of the minutes?

Motion to approve. Second.

Any discussion? I didn't hear any. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? One opposed. You get that, Sharon? Okay. Now we have the minutes of the Town Council Informational Work Session from September 8th. Is there a motion to approve? Motion to approve. Second. Come on, y'all. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed?

Abstain. I wasn't here.

You weren't here. Okay.

I woke everybody up. It was sleepy up here.

I wouldn't tell you. All right. Next, we have a special presentation. We want to start with something that just hit the ground running today, and that's Mike and Josie Baza, the owners of Novel Bakery. You're here, right? Right. Can you come forward?

Yeah.

We're glad to have you here, and it was nice to be with you this morning to see that open. I haven't been home since I last saw you. But welcome. Introduce yourselves, please, to the council member and everybody that's here and everybody that's watching. And we're wishing you great success because I think you've put together a very nice facility for the town.

Thank you. I'm Josie Bozzo.

And Mike Bozzo.

And we live right here in Chesapeake Beach, only a few blocks away. And I started in 2022 as a home baker under the cottage food laws in the state, selling baked goods at the farmer's market. And then two years later, we jumped up to the trailer. And then two years after that, we signed a lease on a space a couple of blocks from here. And we opened two days ago.

And I had the opportunity, I think a number of us had the opportunity to be there this morning. And what you've done, the work you've done inside, it looks great. I mean, it's really, really a very attractive place. And I've lived here since 1985. And I've got to tell you, that building's been through a lot in that period of time. But this is the best I've ever seen it. So you all have done a great job. And congratulations. Thank you.

Yeah, I just got two quick comments. One, first of all, congratulations. I think you guys are a perfect example of why cottage home businesses are extremely important to our community and everywhere across the board. And then the second piece is your daughter is doing a great job on social media. You are on my TikTok and Facebook account, so I love it.

We'll be excited to hear that. she bugged us for a year to get on Tik TOK. And I told her, I said, I don't have time for another thing.

I think her statement was my parents won't. So I am. Yes.

Yeah. Congratulations. I think it's such an inspiring story. You know, you guys have like, I really built a, a, a quite a fanfare, you know, and, and it's a great location. Um,

You can't miss it when you're coming into town.

No, not at all. One thing I would say is, man, one thing we all can agree is, a couple years ago, we definitely needed more places to get us some coffee around town. Best of wishes. I wish I would have been able to come, but I'm thankful that y'all were able to show up tonight.

Stu, thank goodness. for sandwiches. And then we have some lunch sandwiches as well. So yeah, we've expanded our menu as well.

I like that too. I just want to thank Sarah and Ashley J as well for helping us through the process. Sarah was great on understanding what we, what we could and couldn't do. And then there was some stuff that Jay got involved in with as well. It was very helpful. So thank you guys for your support and help.

I really appreciate your saying that because I think the work of the town employees sometimes doesn't get recognized. And I'm grateful that you said that.

And you guys have been, John and Anthony, you have been in touch as well.

I know what we were doing.

We figured it out.

And I know you've got a lot of expertise between John, Anthony, and Jay. Yeah. But no, this is great. I mean, it speaks well of the town that we have a new business that's really very attractive. And so anybody that's watching on TV, anybody that's in the room, I encourage you to stop by. It is a great new amenity within the town of Chesapeake Beach. And can we give them a round of applause?

6 a.m. to 2 p.m., Wednesday to Saturday, and then Sunday, 7 a.m. to 2.

All right, I got three things I owe you for a hat. Let me know when my T-shirt gets in.

Speaking of that, just a minute.

And I'll be in next week so we can start talking about what my special sandwich is going to be. Don't pick up that, Anthony. So we'll be all good. But thank you. I'll see you guys soon.

This is how a council member can be very influential.

I got this whole thing figured out, man. I'll see you next week. Thank you, guys.

Thank you so much.

Glad you're here. Anthony, don't you have some ice cream named after some frozen ice? Yeah, I do.

Yeah. I think one's enough. I'm working it out. All right.

We're going to move on to something that's really fun.

I'm going to come down there. And if the principal of Beach Elementary would join me. Let's go, Brock. We're the only school in any municipality in Chicago County that's . And we have a in the middle of $15,000 to assist the students at the school and assist you in all of your efforts. And we're so glad you're here tonight, and congratulations. Thank you, Steve.

I can just say on behalf of the students at each elementary school and the families, we really do appreciate the generosity of the talent and the citizens here. We put the money to good work, making sure they get that opportunity beyond just reading, writing, and math. So we try to really foster the same activities and provide those extra opportunities. So that's where this money goes to. That's great. Congratulations.

Don't take that to the bank.

Yeah, don't take that to the bank. All right. Next is the Calvert Oysters and Great Shellfish Bay Ryan St. Leonard Calvert Soil Conservation. How are you, sir?

Thank you for being here. Happy to be here. Thank you all. So let me introduce myself first. Ryan Sandler. I work for Calvert Soil Conservation. Obviously, my presentation's on oysters, so it might not be clear on why Calvert Soil Conservation District might be into oysters. So just to get that clear, in the 70s with the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act, It really became the soil and water conservation districts. I spent a few years designing conservation practices for farmers to improve water quality, reduce sediment erosion, and stuff like that. And I see a big missing piece, and that's oysters. I love this map. This map is from 1893, so about 130 years ago or so, and it shows on the shoreline all of the different oyster reefs, three-dimensional oyster reefs coming out the water column up to mean low water in our area. You can see along Calvert they completely and entirely lined our shoreline. It's pretty massive reefs. So to begin, we're going to go over the basics. What are oysters? I know you guys have Sue and I know you guys have Jay, so you guys probably know a lot of this. They're shellfish. Most people know we eat them. They're a really good source of zinc and protein, very lean, good for us. But more than that, they're ecosystem engineers. And really what they are is the foundation of the Chesapeake Bay physically, chemically, and biologically. So physically, we don't often see it. But in other states, the oysters can come out of the water column. You'll see them right up to the shoreline. And they grow on top of each other. And they form three-dimensional reefs. And they provide shoreline protection by acting almost like rock or cement. They literally cement together. They're made of calcium carbonate. But they break waves offshore. And in our region, they don't grow in the intertidal zone. But they do create what's called a perched beach profile. I think that 130 years ago, that's how we maintained our beaches for so long because they held, essentially acted like as a retaining wall underwater and just held the sediment near shore as the cliffs eroded and as the stream started inputting sediments, the littoral drift, which is like how sand transfers up and down the shoreline with the currents and wind, they get trapped behind those reefs and then you build up beach and then waves are breaking on beach rather than the toe of our cliffs or at our shoreline where our houses are. And also physically, they filter the water. We've seen those videos of you put a few oysters in a 50-gallon tank within a day. It's clean. It's clear. like a flocculant. Chemically, they are a carbon sink. I mean, like I said, they're made of calcium carbonate, so they do attenuate some carbon in there. That's a problem for the bay. Ocean acidification's happening. Our pH is going down. Oysters at scale could potentially be a buffer against ocean acidification. They also have nitrogen and phosphorus. A lot of what we do in the critical area and a lot of regulations are based off of nitrogen reduction, phosphorus reduction, and other pollutant reductions. Oysters do all of this. Indirectly, they also create bacteria, sunlight, and then it takes nitrogen and phosphorus and it starts growing. When you have excess nitrogen and excess phosphorus, it becomes a major problem. The algae is not a major problem. The algae is not a problem in and of itself. It's when the algae dies, bacteria eats it, and bacteria consumes the oxygen, which makes less available for fish and other wildlife, blue crabs and whatnot, and we get mass die-offs, huge die-off events. So this graphic here shows a little bit of technically how nutrient-rich water flows into the water. Algae takes that and grows. What SAV used to do, like submerged aquatic vegetation used to do, is now what algae does almost exclusively. And the other big filter feeder that we have now is jellyfish. Neither are all that desirable. Oysters at scale could potentially reduce those. Externally, oysters, like I said, they provide a foundation to create that perched beach. So what that does is on the near shore side, it raises up the bottom, and then it also lowers local turbidity, which makes more sunlight available to the bottom, which then could lead to more SAV, and it's contained. So we don't have to worry about it on our boat rotors. We can have it in the near shore environment that provides additional protection, more habitat for fish and crabs, and essentially a whole bunch of stuff gets better when you add more oysters in the water. They're also the biological foundation. I like to say that they're like cities underwater. If you go around the bay up and down our shoreline, you'll notice that in every fallen tree or every crab pod or reef ball, there's a ton of wildlife around there. Our wildlife in the bay is craving three-dimensional structure. And if you walk out, it's barren. It's barren right now, except for some little pots here and there. But not just like the city as the physical structure, but then the whole ecosystem that they're there. That's why they're called ecosystem engineers. So our shoreline, it doesn't look like it much, but out of our shoreline was about a mile and a half wide reef. So these things were massive, and they were, again, completely and entirely lined it. We had remnants. My mom remembers growing up, and she went to ranch estates in my great-grandparents' house, and they would walk out of Second Beach and pick up crabs, clams, oysters, and mussels, and you can't do that anymore. And that's pretty recent. Part of that's because of overharvest. Part of that's knocking down the three-dimensional structure from our methods of harvesting oysters. Part of that is disease, and part of that's a little bit of dissolved oxygen issues. We're at about 1%. And I often say that we do all this land-based stuff and a lot of sacrifice and a lot of money spent to improve the health of the bay and to try to save the bay, and we're at 1% capacity. So if you imagine your pool or the water park, for example, if the filtering is down, how do you expect that water to look? You can put a glass house around a pool, and I cleaned pools actually right out of college, and the first thing we did is always check the filter. Without the filter, it doesn't matter how many chemicals you reduce or how many chemicals you add and try to balance the pH. It doesn't matter because you don't have the filtration capacity. So what we need is a mass increase in oysters to increase our base filtering capacity. And it provides a bunch of other benefits because none of this is cheap. This stuff is very expensive. Marine construction is expensive. Oyster restoration is expensive. It requires high-tech facilities like Horn Point Laboratory and some other private hatcheries to produce larvae that then we can remote set. So then how can we add the value for the dollar spent? And that's where shoreline protection comes in. We can slow down our cliff erosion. We could potentially bring back our beaches where right now we just have rock and then it goes to water. So we could be really creative with that. I love this. Calvert Interactive Maps gives us some historical data. And I don't know how many people know, but in 1938, we had a horse track around here. Pretty impressive. So I like this because it shows the shoreline. And what you can see here, This doesn't have a laser, I don't think. But you can see in the first picture, 1938, you can see beach. It was here. So we had sandy beaches. If you remember, like 1938, we didn't have as many oysters as we did in 1890 or so because we had mass harvest begin at that point. But we had significantly more oysters in 1938 than we did even 30 years ago. So we still had these remnant reefs. And I think they were providing some beach action there. You can also see in the bottom right the mile and a half long pier that used to be out of the Rod and Reel. I think that's pretty cool. And then you can see in 2003 and then 2023 a little bit of the sandbars that are growing offshore. That's what's happening. As sediment erodes and gets put onshore, if nothing's holding it there and elevating that beach, it's just kind of getting more and more shallow further and further offshore. And that's going to probably continue in perpetuity until we run out of sediment. That'll take a long, long time and won't be in our lifetimes. But we could also bring that back to the shoreline and then stabilize our shoreline a little bit better. Here's Bayfront Park. It's a little bit difficult to see in this one as well, but there is a blue line starting from where it's at in 2023, where the cliffs of the beach are at. And you can see just less than 100 years ago how much erosion has occurred there, over 200 feet. towards those cliffs that you can't walk towards anymore. Really dangerous to walk over there. And I think it's off limits now, even. But that's Bayfront Park.

I moved here in 1985, and I can tell you since 1985, Bayfront Park has almost disappeared from what it was when we moved here.

In my lifetime, even. I was born in 1994, born and raised here, and that's the same thing. I go there pretty often. I've seen it in the winter in blowout tides. I've seen it in the summer with extreme high tides, storm events, and that's what's happening there.

Yeah.

So I wanted to bring to our future, there is a misconception about eating oysters. People think like if they're so good for the water, why would we want to take them out of the water? And here's why. The shell economy is in the toilet. We do not have enough shell to do the amount of oyster restoration that we need in the Chesapeake Bay. Oysters don't set on anything like they set on shell. They'll set on rocks and they'll set on wood and glass and all sorts of alternative substrates. But what they were designed to do was set on shell. So if we eat more oysters, we can get more shells and get more oysters back in the water. So I like to say for every oyster eaten, you can get at least four new oysters that are adults that are reproducing at massive rates. So it's a good selling point for the Waterman. Highly nutritious. They're very cheap right now. I think that the market's pretty low. I think you can get like $35 a bushel or something like that. It's kind of unreal how cheap they are. Other things that we can do, we have a great team with CBOX and with Jay. Putting out oysters on our sanctuary. We do have part of the sanctuary. But what we could also do is volunteer with CCA and the Chesapeake Beach Elementary Reef Ball Builds. And all the fifth graders are doing that. They're getting educated. And it's good education for adults as well. So volunteer with them. Volunteer with Seabox. And then potentially rebuilding our reefs. That's my goal. What my job is right now is to develop a program that is building reefs for shoreline protection and environmental restoration and really saving the bay. And I love Chesapeake Beach. This is where I was born and raised. So if we can get some reefs built here, that'd be great. Now, that's not on the agenda. That's something to think about for the long term. And we can discuss those specifics later. But reefs that are built for shoreline protection outside of sanctuaries, which ends pretty much at the marina here, the marina entrance. So if you're building a reef, it becomes your property, and it's protected from harvest because now it is your property when you're using a reef for shoreline protection. So we can build them outside of sanctuaries. Also, this past legislative session at the state level, we changed the definition of living shorelines to mean more than intertidal marshes. So now it's an opportunity to build living shorelines, and you get a little bit of credit for that. Actually, there's a lot of credit for that. If you're getting into the carbon credit trading, nutrient trading for phosphorus and nitrogen, Europe has biodiversity credits. The trend is generally about five, ten years later from whatever Europe's doing, we start doing, whether it's fashion or regulations. In this case, it would be regulations. And I'd encourage you that. Oysters host 300 different species in the water. Like I said, they're the foundation and they're the structure that things are craving. So I just want to encourage you all to support CBOX, support CCA, and keep me in mind if you guys ever have some shoreline erosion issues that you guys would like to be addressed. And we can do it in a really nature-based way that's really, really well done.

Well, thank you for coming in. And I will say I've lived here since 1985, and I've seen a fair bit of changes since 1985. But the CBOX project and all that, the town initiated that, and that was something that was done when I served previously. And I'm quite proud of that. And I think that that is – and the fact that we get the students from the schools there – and educate them when they're young so they can understand the impact of this in our natural environment, to me, makes a big difference. So I appreciate your being here. Does anybody have any questions?

I have two. Well, the first thing is get an underwater drone. And when you come back for the next presentation, while I was with some underwater shots.

And I think he might be willing to help you.

Let's go underwater. Let's see some things. This was cool because Jamie likes slide shows. He was nodding the whole time. He loved it. We can get underwater. We can get some visuals. That'd be awesome. But what I want to ask, I know today there was an executive order for 13508 about the Chesapeake Bay Restoration and Clean Water Act. Does that affect you guys at all? And are there any ways that the town can help pick up some slack if you're not getting anything that you need from other regulatory levels?

I'm glad you said the talent should pick up the slack, because that's my vision. What I tell people all the time is Calvary Soil Conservation is a locally led, volunteer-based organization of the government. It's a weird spot in the government. We're not regulatory. We don't mandate anything. Everything we do is voluntary. We persuade people. My vision for the future of the Chesapeake Bay is not the federal government. People from Arizona paying for Chesapeake Bay restoration. I don't see the point in that. Just like I don't want to restore anything that they got going on in Arizona. We live here. So my vision is locally led, supported by larger organizations, whether that's academia, federal government, state government and local. I don't think it's going to – it's affecting a lot of people that became reliant on that money. We are not reliant on that money. And with oyster restoration, there are so many different pots of funding that you can pull from. I like to say it's like picking out a bag of chips from the gas station. It's almost difficult to choose what funding source do we want to go for today. But they're all available because this hits on so many different goals that we have. is getting the first oyster reef in Calvert County.

I saw the presentation for that actually.

And I'm happy to provide the designs. I'm happy to provide cost estimates and all that. Through us, because we're government, we can save a lot of costs because I can do a lot of the work myself and in office with my team and then partnerships that we have. Happy to provide that. I think that would be more of like maybe a working session or something like that.

It was a work session.

Happy to. But I have nothing in mind right now. I mean, there's so much low-hanging fruit. That is where we go for it first. That's easiest and best and maximum benefit for people. So maybe Bayfront Park.

I know they had issues like at the jetty. They were trying to rebuild the jetty and something happened. They ran out of money. I think that was the... what was it called? The engineering corpse or whatever. But, um, that might be a good spot to put some of those, uh, reefs to break up the waves. And cause we have to dredge that, uh, panel like every other year or something. Cause it fills in.

That'll continue happening. I don't think the oyster reefs are going to stop that from happening. Um, But we could also, the state's pushing beneficial reuse of dredge material. So right now, what are you guys doing with your dredge material? Are you just pushing it to the sides? Because we could backfill beach.

Jay, you can respond to that. But I think the only dredging that's happened recently has been by the rod and reel, hasn't it?

No, we had a federal dredge, and we have a spoiled site. So we take it to land, dewater it, and then haul it off. But that is a little apples and oranges from what you're talking, I think.

What's up there? Yeah, same effect. We could do both. Because instead of bringing it all in land and drying it, we could just pump it over to a beach.

Bayfront Park. I would like for you to come back with a project for us.

Okay.

You want a concept design?

I'd be happy to. I would love something.

I told you. It was not. Filter the water park, right? Put some oysters in there.

That's the other thing. Mitigation. It's in a critical area, and you have to mitigate impacts to a critical area. Oysters are out-of-kind mitigation for tidal wetlands, non-tidal wetlands, for all sorts of different environmental things. It's like a six-to-one ratio.

I would say that given the unique location where our town is and North Beach is, we're the only municipalities in Calvert County. We're small enough that we can do this and we have the waterways and everything. So we need to work together. That's what I'm saying. Happy to.

Yeah, one thing. I'm sorry. I just want to say we've spent some time around on the water shoveling oysters, moving reef balls and all that. And I had no idea he could speak so intelligently and eloquently about all this. But he's on a boat pumping oysters over the side. That's all.

I'm learning every day, too. We went out about two years ago. Glad you're here. Anybody else have questions?

Go ahead. I'm actually glad you came. Thanks. Good video. I've spoke to Sue about this before, but we have such a – there's such a love for the CBOTS program, and we have such a momentum from the fifth graders that I – discussed and even figured out what would we do if we transitioned that to like a high school Chesapeake Bay stewardship program. Maybe we get a state certificate for their high school diploma where they have the volunteer hours. And so, uh, one thing Sue was like, what would I do with all the people? I'm like, Oh man, there might be a solution when that that's a good problem to have. So maybe if there was a way that if we worked on that together, um, we could have like a little seal on your uh high school diploma goes a long way and it's more about setting the the education and like water control water conservation when i was a kid there would be all these videos and it's a long process but to to kind of educate and nurture the The momentum we get from the Seabox is something that I think we could really leverage and expand on what work we've done with that. What's your thoughts?

I mean, I got more than enough ideas for this. I mean, we could expand the Seabox oyster gardening program. We could leverage the Maryland $500 oyster float tax credit. We could hook some people up that are interested in more of the technical side and the IT side, electrical engineering and stuff like that, to talk about underwater drones and monitoring, water quality monitoring. There's ample opportunity for both workforce development, community outreach, and educational programs. Chess Packs is great, too. I love them. They partner with CCA. It seems like Seabox CCA and ChessPacks are a bit of a powerhouse in the environmental education arena. And I think you're right. I think we should leverage that and be creative about how we move forward. And not even just high schoolers, but maybe even CSM students and possibly kids at Chesapeake Biological Laboratory or Morgan State University at Pearl and Jefferson Patterson Park.

It sounds to me like we need to spend a lot more time together. I think there's plenty of opportunities here in Chesapeake Beach for you to work on the things that are important to you that are also important to us. And I thank you for being here. Thank you. It was very informative.

Thank you. Great job with that presentation. Thank you.

All right. One more special presentation. The Calvert County Police Accountability Community Outreach, Susan Justice. Welcome. Welcome.

Thanks. Good to be here.

Nice to see you.

Good evening. Susan Justice. I'm chair of the Police Accountability Board and vice chair of the Administrative Charging Committee. And we just voted two weeks ago and we had a new chair change. So now. Scott Deacon is our chair of the Administrative Charging Committee.

He looks familiar to me. He does look familiar. I've seen him before. Sure I do. Look in the post office. They don't put those posters up there anymore, thankfully.

With this presentation, I'm going to be skimming through a lot of it and just trying to hit on some of the highlights. These are just some of the topics. In 2021, they came out with Maryland Police Accountability Act. And that's basically implemented to provide information awareness and cooperation with citizens, whereas the police departments are no longer regulating themselves when it comes to complaints. These are citizen boards that were created. And their Bill of Rights was removed as far as investigation, interrogation, and subsequent hearings. And that's when it comes primarily to complaints is what we deal with. So it was repealed, and transparency is the big thing. Transparency to the citizens. The Police Accountability Board is the main board, and it is created with nine members, all put on the board by the county commissioners. And there is a chair. They can only serve six years max, and then they have to reappoint other people at that time. Those are the members. The Police Accountability Board, we have a website, and on that website, there is a place for complaints. A citizen can go on that website and complete the complaint form and send it to, it automatically comes to the Police Accountability Board. And with that, they have to be able to identify, I'm skipping, I'm going through real quick. They have to be able to identify that there's actual misconduct or alleged misconduct of an officer. They have to provide their information and they have to list the officer's name. So if that criteria is met, then there's an actual complaint. If the PAB receives it, it is forwarded to the Sheriff's Office, but a citizen can also call the Sheriff's Office and report it directly. They'll take it over the phone, the complaint over the phone there. If you go to our website, Police Accountability Board website under Calvert County Government, there is a tracker, and on that tracker, every complaint is listed. the date, it's given a number, what the complaint was about, abuse or foul language or misconduct, whatever. It's all listed on there so you can see it. And then the citizen can actually track and see the progress of that complaint. Now, the police do have up to a year and a day to complete their investigation. Calvert County Sheriff's Office is rather quick with theirs. So I don't foresee anything. If it's a criminal, we don't get it. I mean, if it's a criminal charge, the Police Accountability Board is not going to get it until possibly that case is completed. Once we receive it, the complaint from the Sheriff's Office, we have 30 days to review and make a determination. So the Sheriff's Office... And that's the administrative charging committee. And I know I'm not really following this. I'm skipping a lot. The sheriff's office is required under their investigation group to gather all the information. They gather all the body cams. So if you think about it, if you have five officers there and they've been there for 40 minutes, you have five officers, 40 minutes of body cam to review. not only the Sheriff's Office, but the Administrative Charging Committee as well. Now, the Administrative Charging Committee, each member, it's a five-member board, has to attend 40-hour training at the Police Standards Training Center in Sykesville before they can even sit on the board so that they have an understanding of the laws and what is misconduct and how do you look at things, what do body cams look like, what are you looking for. So we do all of that. And then, like I said, we have 30 days. So the sheriff's office, they provide everything to us securely. It is a secure site. And the only people that have access to it is the sheriff's office, an individual, our administrator, and each board member. And we're all under a confidentiality requirement. So we go in and we review body cams. We review the written reports. We review any laws or policies that may relate to the allegations. Any interviews that were taken. What am I missing? Something I'm missing on that. But we have to review all of that. Then we meet once a month and we discuss whether the allegation to administratively charge the officer or not administratively charge the officer. Each year there has been officers administratively charged. This became effective July 1st of 2022. So each year there is a tracker. You can look in the annual reports on the website as well, and it's gonna show you trending. It's gonna show you charts. And it'll show you all of the information as far as what we're looking at and what we're seeing. We have one that we're going to be coming out with the next Police Accountability Board meeting, which meets quarterly, and it'll be on policies violated. So that's only going to be those that have been administratively charged. What policy did they violate? Because it has to be a policy or a law that they have violated. Again, it has to be misconduct. We do have a memorandum of understanding with the state's attorney's office. That came out in December of 2022 and with the sheriff's office, August of 2023. I took over as chair last year and we brought both of those back up and reviewed them just to make sure that nothing had changed and what was in there and that the law hasn't changed, that it was correct, and then got new signatures for them. Just trying to move fast here. So the big things to remember too is that the Police Accountability Board, it's a nine member, we are required to look forward. So we see trending. Now what can we do? Is there something that needs to be revised? or do we need to have request retraining? And these are things that we request of the sheriff's office. We also, the chairs, we meet with the sheriff and his staff two weeks prior to every Police Accountability Board meeting to go over issues, questions, if they have things that they wish to discuss or if we're seeing things and we want to bring them up and get a ruling on them. They also have an officer that, a captain that is available. While we're having our ACC meetings, going through these complaints, Say we come up with a question, we're not sure about something, then we can call that officer. If that officer does not provide the information that satisfies the committee, then we can send it back to the sheriff's office. which extends our time then. And the sheriff then has to do further investigation and provide us with the information. Say there were four officers there and we only got two body cams, body-worn cameras, video. We're going to send it back and say we want the other two. just so we're sure what we're looking at because this is someone's life that we're affecting. And we want to make sure on the citizen's behalf as well as the officer's behalf that we're going through this material correctly. here's our website where you can get more information. One thing that we found in trending, last year, the sheriff's office had over 101,000 calls of service, which is a lot in this county. That's a lot of calls. For about 175 officers, there were 32 complaints. That calculates out to 0.04% of complaints versus the calls of service that the officers in this county run. That's pretty good. So that speaks highly of the sheriff and his staff of making sure that their officers and that their personnel are adhering to the laws and are doing what they are supposed to do. What have I missed?

Well, a couple of things. Well, first and foremost, we were the first. There were three counties that were trained at the same time at the community college down in Prince Frederick, St. Mary's County, Charles County and us. I was in that class. It was an outstanding class, but it was a learning case for them as well as for us. We are very fortunate in this county. We only have one law enforcement function. Every county only has one PAB and one ACC. So if you consider Baltimore, PG County, or Montgomery County, that's a nightmare. And they only have so many members. We are very fortunate with one, and we have a very good one. Again, our role, as Susan said, that we only do violations of non-criminal policy. Now, that case has got to occur after we took power because if something happened and we did get some of those cases early on that happened and the complaints were about something happened before we had authority to look into the case, then it had to be solved in the old manner. Additionally, the previous chair, Wilson Perrin, and I went out on a community rounds, anybody that wanted us to come talk about it, because this is an important thing. We went to the NAACP, League of Women Voters. We actually went to the Fraternal Order of Police because there's a lot of consternation and concern about what was going to happen because they lost their Bill of Rights, which I certainly can understand. Again, the county did an outstanding job in selecting people. The very first people that were on the ACC ward, one of them was Wilson Perrin, a former commissioner. We had a Ph.D. physicist. We had a mental health professional. We had a pediatric nurse. And I was the law enforcement guy. So that worked out very well. They did a good job meeting the criteria for a demographic as was required by the state. And the state also created a matrix on how you look at this. It's consistent across the entire state. So when you get an allegation, And if it's the first thing you decide is, is it true or not? Did it really happen? And again, the county did a great job giving us those computers so we can do that because it takes quite a bit of time. And then we meet and discuss and come up with the appropriate answer. In any case, they gave us computers that have a VPN. It's a great thing. We're one of the few counties that does that. I can't imagine there were people that meet together and all watch the movies, all watch the videos at the same time. And that can be long. One of the first cases we ever ran had 15 hours of video. I mean, it was mind-numbing. But in part of all things, we have procedures that we wrote, internal procedures. You must look at all the evidence. I received accolades from the people that teach that class, the Mellon Standards Commission. Again, I think partly because we're small, but partly because we're well organized. And, um, So we want to get the word out. We do have – it's not we're trying to jump up business, but the reality is things do happen. Things that we came – that were pretty interesting that came up that we don't have jurisdiction over. Yes, the correctional officers are part of the sheriffs. However, that's a separate thing. They are not law enforcement. They are correctional officers. They had a separate Bill of Rights, and that was not included in this legislation. And we had some very – adamant people that we should be able to look at that. We don't have the authority to do so. And that's just the way it is. And there is a checks and balance system too. If the officer is found to be charged and he is not happy about that, or she is not happy about that, they can go to a trial board. And it's a good process. So I think we've only had one of those.

Yeah, we've only had one in the county.

So it works. But, again, we want to make sure we get the word out. And so kind of that's where we are today.

Well, thank you both for being here tonight and explaining this. This is very informative. I think it's important for the council and all the citizens that are either here or watching to know about this. And so I truly appreciate your being here. Does anybody on the council have any questions?

I would love to say one thing. I love that those meetings are one hour. Every time I come to the meeting, you get right on point. We're out of there in an hour. I really want to make sure that, you know, other people learn how to get that focus, get it out. But I have enjoyed being on the Police Accountability Board. I like working with you guys, and I love that those meetings are on.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. And I will tell you just in the most general sense, our job is to evaluate observed behavior against the standard. It's that simple. It's not personal. There is no... Biased in it is either this is yes or no, based on what that standard is. And the standards are clearly articulated in the sheriff's policies, which we have access to. Additionally, this sheriff's office just went and got recertified for their policies to a program that's both with the law enforcement, International Association of Chiefs of Police and the Sheriff's Association of the United States, whatever it's called, the National Sheriff's Association. And they combined and they come and do a review of all of your policies to make sure they are consistent with the standard across America. And in the case of the IACP, I'm a lifetime member. They are consistent that we our policies are well thought out. So it's not. Yes, sir.

I was just going to ask, I think we have a great sheriff's department here. You mentioned the 0.04% of claims come to you guys. No, no, no, no. Complaints.

We get all complaints.

Of all calls.

But there was over 101,000 calls of service in the county last year with about 175 officers. We had 32 complaints out of all of that. That equates... 2.04% of complaints versus calls of service.

All right, so that indicates that we have a really great sheriff's department. Compare that to, like, are there some jurisdictions that get, like, almost 1% or... Baltimore City gets, like, 100 a week.

Well, I mean, they have a higher volume, but... The population is higher.

Yeah.

Eight out of? Yes. There were only eight that we administrated.

There was a company that was contracted to take a look at the first. years or two with statistics. And unfortunately, they did not do a good job, from my perspective, of normalizing the data. So you could compare how many calls plus population. You have to have about three or four correlation things to get that thing to get along on track and say, yes, this is really good or really bad. Hopefully they'll get that under control because you have to normalize because you can't compare us against a Baltimore or a Montgomery County or PG County. It just doesn't work well unless you can, say, put in parameters that deal with population density and a whole host of other things. So hopefully they'll improve that and get a better overall view as it relates to the state.

And I've reviewed a lot of the county's annual reports. And that type of statistic that was created, I've not seen in those annual reports from the other counties. So it's just something that we kind of came up with that was impactful.

Thank you guys for coming out here. I have a few items. Thank you for letting us know that the the recertification of the standards that the Calvary County Sheriff has. I think Sheriff Cox did that a few years back, and there was also a lot of other things that I think Sheriff Cox has done. I guess right after you guys had done the police, the sheriffs have the GPS, and there's a lot of... lot of administrative things that they've done to help with you. I think the Administrative Charging Committee It's seen and heard that way, but it's also an administrative review, correct? So just because there might not be a sustained complaint doesn't mean there's not a recommendation for improvements and stuff like that.

And that's true, but that's just to give the differentiation between the ACC and PAB. If we looked at that, we don't make the determination we would recommend the PAB. And because the PAB chair is also the vice chair of the ACC, it makes it a really clean move. And Sue takes that over to talk to Wilson before her, and will go talk to the sheriff and say, hey, we think this is a deficiency. And there was an early one that came up that what they said, the policy did not cover. And because it didn't say that, you had to go and say, yeah, you have to charge this person. But there's a reasonable reason, and so they fixed the policy. So it can work.

Yeah, I think we've been really lucky in a county. It's a peninsula, so that's one. But I think it was, a few years back, it was an uptick in complaints, but then it's gone back. And I think it's, I don't know, I think it's, It's probably a top-down. I think they have pretty good leadership there.

No doubt about it. And in the beginning, it was new, and so they were flying in with complaints. And then that's about the time, it was right after the first year that Ricky Cox became sheriff, and then he started making changes and gradual changes. And one thing is when the ACC makes a recommendation to him, let's say it's three days leave without pay, he cannot go less than that. In the state matrix, there are categories. And, you know, it may be written reprimand up to three days leave without pay. If the ACC says three days leave without pay, he has to give that. He cannot go less. He can go higher, not less. But he has to stay within that category. And he does that.

This is a really heartening policy. You can tell a lot of thought went into it and the makeup of the board and all of your rules and processes and you two present here. Well, for this board, I think it gives everybody a lot of confidence. So thank you for coming.

If you have questions, we're open to answer questions at any time. I mean, that's what it is.

Yeah, you can email even into the PAB anytime you have any questions. And actually, you can present your questions to Anthony if you would like. Oh, Anthony will make sure that I get that.

Well, thank you all very much for being here. Very informative presentation. And it's really good to hear, you know, what is going on. And so thanks again for being here.

Well, thank you for having us.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate the opportunity.

And I miss seeing you at steak night.

Sorry, I was double booked.

Next, we have the town administrator's report.

The town administrator's report was submitted as a part of the council meeting agenda package. I just have a couple of things that I wanted to flag of note. One pertains to the 18th Street ballots that were removed. We had people submit concerns about that. So just wanted to give a brief update. The mayor, public works administrator and myself met on site and we had just to be able to evaluate what was happening. We had an opportunity to speak with the homeowners that were concerned and the business owners who also have concerns. And so from that conversation, we have a better holistic understanding of what's going on. Very quickly, the ballots were removed. They were on the private property side. There was a former resident who has since passed away who was really adamant about working to get those ballards put in place, had presented it to town council and back in 2009 there was an ordinance done. So it is that the through traffic there is not supposed to be happening and it's regulated by ordinance. The ballards were on private property, however, and so the private property owners removed the ballards. Since there is legislation already in place that mandates that it should be there, we have begun looking into vendors that would be able to offer some other suggestions to be able to control the through traffic that has been resulting of the ballot, resulted from the ballots being removed. There's concerns on both sides about traffic safety and also being able to exit out of the shopping center when there is an emergency and I think that that's fair so we're looking for ways to meet the what's mandated in the code but also make sure that we're able to keep people safe and so town staff is working on that and because it is an unbudgeted thing we'll be presenting options to council in the coming months of how we can remedy that situation so it 15th Street stairs is another thing that I just want to flag. So we've been in communication with the homeowner trying to get an easement agreement in place just so that we can reopen the stairs. So we are hopefully very close to being able to have something in writing and signed. But we're actively working on that and we'll continue to bring updates to you all once we have them. Additionally, in the town administrator's report, there is a section called FY27 quarterly project update, and it just recaps the quarterly projects as they relate to budget items. So it's taking it from the budget and and connecting it to the activity that's actually being done so that you, that members of the public are better able to understand how those things work together. Because oftentimes they feel like disparate conversations, right? The budget feels like one thing, the projects feel like another. This is meant to help bridge that gap. And so I'll be putting this in quarterly just to recap the activity. Within that section, I wanted to flag a couple of things. One is the town wayfinding and placemaking. So some people are already very aware of this, others are not, so I just wanted to flag it here. Part of what we've been talking about is creating something that makes it very clear who we are as a town, right? And so we do that. It's called placemaking. It is an intentional effort to create that sense of community. And one way to do that is through the signs, right? And so we have received one proposal for work that's been done, and they have done really great work in Annapolis, but one proposal is one proposal. And so we are working with our engineer to get a couple more proposals so then we can share it with the council as a whole, but also the walkability community. Community group advisory group so that you all can weigh in Before we move forward on that, but that is actively moving forward So that's one another thing I wanted to flag is that you budgeted for There to be like a satellite space for the sheriff's office and so we've been working the plan right now is to put it over in captain's quarters and There is space that we've been working through. We're just trying to finalize the memorandum of understanding. So once we do that, that will be underway. The idea there, before they had a satellite office in courtyards. And so after the fire, the courtyards had to repurpose that space. And so they've kind of been an operation without a home, but we know that they do such great work in the community. It would be lovely to be able to have them more prominently positioned so that people see that they can go to the satellite office if they have questions, as opposed to having to drive all the way down to Prince Frederick, which isn't that far, but it's nice to be able to provide this resource to the community, both for Chesapeake Beach residents and North Beach residents. So more to come on that. And the last thing in this section is that we are planning to relaunch the newsletter in January. So if you are on social media, you've seen we've been taking a vote on what to call the newsletter. So if you haven't voted and you have thoughts, please vote. If you don't have social media, you can also – if you get the e-blast, you'll receive information on how to submit your vote for what the newsletter should be called. But the idea with the newsletter is that it would be this – You know, through the town you get municipal updates, but, like, the newsletter is how you learn about the people of the town. And so that's really a large part of our focus is to be able to put the people's voice in more about, like, what is it? human interest stories in the newsletter. So if you have ideas, if you're interested in contributing to the newsletter, photos, or you want to write for the newsletter, please email info at, because we would love to have more community involvement when it comes to that. Other updates. So there were requests between last meeting and the meeting before from council. One was for us to have a permits page that clearly provided a flow chart that helped people to better understand how to navigate the permits process. We are putting the final touches on that, and it should launch tomorrow. So that will be available on our town website. And the second was for us to update the water park project page with concept plans. So we received those plans this week, and they are live on the website. And then outside of that, there are some events that I want to flag. So Taste the Beaches is this week. It's on Saturday. So we hope to see you there. The final summer night festival is happening on Friday evening over at Kellams Field. And coming up next week, the green team is going to be presenting a talk on stormwater control in your backyard. And you'll be able, if you attend, you'll be able to learn more about their plans to plant a buffer garden using native plants along the Chesapeake Beach Railway Trail. So it's going to be, they always put on a fantastic talks. So if you are available, you should attend. And it will be over at the library. So there's more information on the website. But just wanted to flag, those are just items that I wanted to flag, and I'm happy to take questions.

Sam, I don't have any questions, but I did want to just add on to your report. So talking with Wayne and his staff, the Kellums information is getting closer to where we'll have some kind of information here soon. So that's good. And then just a reminder that we have had a few people connecting. And real quick, Kellums, Lori, I will want to talk with you on how Walkability wants to participate in the walk path to make sure it connects into however that group sees it appropriate as you said before you wanted to support that but then the Veterans Park initiative that's been going well we've had a lot of conversations regarding that so just to keep it on your reminder that a lot of the bricks are fading and there's like a small group that's been talking about how do we you know maybe revitalize that and then since we're 20 plus years since it was first installed looking at potential upgrade opportunities to make it more user-friendly, just make it nicer. It's got a little wear and tear on it from where it's located at. Thank you.

I have a few items here. I guess with the Sheriff Satellite Space, my idea for that is... If it was a place where people knew, and I don't know if you have a list, but I guess that little house that we got behind us, I always thought that was a good location because people knew where to access it at. And so we could have like AEDs there, Narcons there, and different things like that. So people knew where to drop things off and stuff. And even, I guess, there's like child care pickup and drop-off. There's a lot of ways that we probably could benefit. I think that Dunkirk has a spot now, and I think there's three districts. And North Beach has a place, or are they looking to have it here now? Does North Beach still have their office there?

I believe, but it's just very small, so it doesn't fit all of their deputies.

Well, you could answer that, Tom.

But the idea when this created, of course, we lost Fishing Creek. When Ricky Cox was elected, he came forward and he actually instituted the district stations spread out away from Prince Frederick. So there is a district station in Dunkirk. There is one in the main station of Prince Frederick, which is District 2. And there's a district station in Lusby. We wanted to kind of keep that concept going with the beach because we did lose our space over there and have it, yes, where people can come and report things. Right now, most of those district stations are staffed. Unless they have to run out for an emergency like the commanders are there Monday through Friday and stuff or where they have or but a lot of them eventually the upgrade would be they've upgraded them throughout where they push a call button if no one answers inside or ring the Prince Frederick and they dispatch a car to there. things like that. But yes, there's spaces where they can safely transfer children. I guess if you buy something online, there's an exchange. If you want to meet there, the basic exchange, because it's unfamiliar, you don't want to get robbed for trying to sell stuff and things. There's a lot of things we can use it for once it's up and running and advertised. There'll be signage. The good thing about Cap, it's right there on the main road. We can have a block on their sign. There'll be a sign above. Actually, the layout is currently, we don't have to do much of the change from where the health department's in there. There's a waiting area we're going to have where you can come and there'll be a table with the chairs to meet with the deputy. And then the rest will be the deputy's room and then a commander's office. So it'll all actually work out. We don't have to do much change at all, which is good to lay out. So it actually ended up being great.

Yeah, and that's a good dispatch location, a good, I think, right in the heart and central where the majority of your calls are from. So it might deter CVS rivalries.

Yeah, the visibility that would, I mean, there would be usually probably a lot of times a cruiser parked there, things like that. The visibility, the fact it's there, the fact that it's kind of, you know, The district station in Dunkirk, they're there, and they're filling out reports, but right across the street from Walmart. Same thing. I mean, they're there. Instead of having to run... Right now, we are kind of working out of the one little office in North Beach. It's a nice office, but if a deputy needs a place... Yeah, it's small. If a deputy needs a place to write a report, I have to get up and leave because they need the computer to sit at. So instead of running to Prince Frederick, things like that. So it's... it'll actually work. Now, we will still use the North Beach office, yes. We told them we're not going to vacate over there, but it's kind of a shared thing where you can move it out, space it out a little.

It's actually really nice. I've seen some of your deputies out there, and they'll be children, young teenagers and stuff like that, and they'll walk by, and they're approachable, and I don't know. When I was a kid, the police on horses would walk on Riverdale Day on the trail and go back and forth to Greenville Park. And just that's, I think, a good way. And so being out in the community and reachable and conversation.

As we've worked through this, I've been involved in this. One of the things that I thought was good to have it in the location that we're going to is the visibility because nobody really knew that they were back in courtyards. So it means that we'll have that presence, and their cars will be parked in that parking lot that's visible. I mean, practically everybody in town will be able to see that they are there. So I think that will give us a feeling of security, and also people can have it in their mind, well, I can always run over there if I need to. I can find you. I think it's a good thing.

Yeah, yeah. And so I'd be definitely in support of that.

The district stations we have, you see people. Originally, it wasn't known. People were still coming to Princeford. I think the word has gotten out. I actually had a training up there the other day at Dunkirk. I went up there for it. Someone knocked on the door while we were there to report something. So it's working elsewhere. I mean, it's been a couple years since they've been there. So once the word gets out, once it's there for a while, I think we'll see the foot traffic and everything.

And then you could have bicycle patrol in and out of there, right?

Yes. Actually, our corporal, which I want to bring to a meeting one day. Our new corporal is the bike patrol, actually supervisor, the commander of the bike patrol, I guess the head lead of it. But I'll bring him to a meeting maybe next week. Yes.

Yeah. So I think it's going to work out. I think it's going to work out quite well. And it's a two-year lease, if I'm not mistaken.

I agree. It's a three-year lease. I left that to you all. Okay, it's a three-year. I got out of the lease, but I think that they wanted around a three-year. I think that's what, is that what we're doing?

It's a three-year lease with... How long? Or it's a three-year lease. How do you say this, Alyssa? It's one year, but we can extend for three years.

And I think that the... Fishing Creek is not going to be available for the foreseeable future. We actually did talk about building back here, but I don't think it's occupable.

Well, and as I said before, I think the visibility of this location as opposed to being back in Fishing Creek is going to serve our citizens a whole lot better. I mean, they're going to know where to find you and have... And there will probably be patrol cars there frequently, and so they'll have... That'll give them some comfort to know that we have this presence and that you don't really have that now. You don't really have that.

A place to respond. We, I mean, have all the time people pull up because they have a problem and they want to know where the closest office is. So they'll have a place where they can actually go and pull up there and say this is the sheriff's office kind of. And so it'll be. Looking forward to it. I know the deputies are looking forward to it, too.

Great. All right. Well, thanks, but you can't leave yet. I can't leave yet. Go ahead, Samilia. Any more questions? Any questions for Samilia? Council members? All right. Let's move on, then. Town Treasurer's Report. Thank you, Samilia.

That was a good report. So you have a copy of the treasurer's report in your packet. A couple items to comment on. The fiscal year 26 annual audit field work began this week. That's gone along smoothly. Don't see any issues with that. Final report will be issued by the end of October. We are switching payment vendors for bill paying online. The current processor, which is Elevon, is not going to be accepted anymore by the Tyler system, which is the accounting system that we have. So, we are going with the new system that Tyler offers. They only gave us a couple options. It should be a seamless transition, and the Tyler system option that we'll be going with is actually a lower fee for the processing. Under the Elevon system, we were paying about 3% per transaction. On the Tyler system, it should be about 2%. So it should be a small savings there. The other item I wanted to touch base on is about halfway down on the report. I just wanted to bring to your attention that we got a price increase for the refuse and trash removal, or refuse and recycling. It was about an 8% increase, which was a little shock to me. It seemed like a higher amount, so I did contact Evergreen to ask them why that's the case, because we had only budgeted a 3% increase this year. So the difference is about $40,000 in the budget. So we will need a budget adjustment later in the year to cover that. But the answer that I got back from Larry Foster at Evergreen was that there have been tipping fee increases, cost of disposal at the land fee has increased both last year and this year. It went up about 10% last year, and last year there was about a 3.2% cost of living. So they were entitled to an increase last year, which they did not put forward to us. This year there was an increase of another 3% at the landfill for tipping fees, and the cost of living this year was about 3.5%. So, per their contract over the last two years, they could have increased the price about 13 percent because of those increases that's written into their contract. The increase they did put forth was about 8 percent. So, you know, it was lower than what they anticipated. So I'm confident that they were entitled to the increase. I did ask him that in the future if they are anticipating an increase, if they would make us aware of that more in the March timeframe than July when we could consider it and put it in the budget. So just wanted to make you all aware of that because we'll be needing a budget adjustment for that later in the year to cover it. Other than that, you know, I think the other items are pretty self-explanatory, but if you have any questions on any of those, I'd try to answer those.

I don't think I've got any questions.

What about the number of users with the trash increase? Was there an increase in users?

No, numbers are the same, just the cost of service.

All right. Well, thank you very much. Enjoy your concise report. Oh, thank you. Public Works, Jay.

Good evening. So same thing, you have my report. There's two things notable I want to point out, and then I'll take questions. But under water main flush, and we normally do it this time of year, early October, we installed a valve yesterday. We plan to install another valve next week or the week after, so that might get pushed back to late October. But just stay tuned to the e-blast and the signage. And then... The other thing you'll see on the last page, I attended a training, and it was interesting. It's Maryland rural water, and a lot of municipal governments go there, but the bottom line, and probably Josh knows, that 75% of licensed operators in the state of Maryland are within five years of retirement, and there's a shortage. That's why they have a lot of the apprenticeship programs and all those other things and it's not i just passed it on because i learned that there and they said hey pass on it's not something you learn in school no one's teaching you to work at a sewer treatment plant right or going to sewer manholes but it is a field that needs people desperately and if uh you know anyone that has any interest in that field there's opportunities there's grants and there's programs out there because uh the state needs them so i'll take any questions any any questions for jay

There are two projects that came out over e-blast. I don't know.

But we did take it over, yes.

Okay. And so what was, I guess, the problem that caused such a quick failure? Yeah.

In a couple areas, I think, it was run over by a contractor or something in two areas. But the biggest problem I found with this extreme heat waves we had this year, same thing that happened in two areas in Chesapeake Village. Every 40 foot, that sidewalk has an expansion because it expands in the sunlight. In the Heritage, where I found where it failed, it literally buckled up. They didn't do a full depth expansion. expansion joint so they had it on the top and they edged it but at the bottom it wasn't all the way through so the concrete couldn't expand it literally has to go somewhere it kind of teepeed and then the heat wave goes away when it goes back down it kind of crumbled but it was only four areas overall for that size of development i wouldn't say it's anything alarming or substantial

Okay. The picture had the entire sidewalk drawn, so I was wondering what could be going on. I'm happy to know that it was only a few areas.

Correct.

And then the other one is a new line. What happened?

So you're referring to the one where we shut off some water on Cox Road? Yes. Yes, so Valve 94, which separates Richfield Station water tower from Old Bayside and Chesapeake Village Tower, exists at Cox Road and G Street. It's failed. It's stuck open. So that's the place where we didn't want to work in the state highway and the road. So we went on Cox Road and installed another valve that will duplicate that valve. So we coordinated with the citizens and had to shut off some water, but we were still fed from both sides of town, so it was a limited impact.

And those projects were or were not budgeted?

They came out of our budget. So we have a maintenance budget every year that they, that's, you know, we typically do four to five valve replacements and things like that every year. So yes, they are budgeted. Foresee we're gonna be definitely within budget on that but there's oh, you know an anomaly can happen But we do that four to five times a year replace a valve or dig up a valve. So that's kind of a maintenance typical thing Okay.

Okay, that's relieving Well, it's not fun.

But I mean I that that normally happens. It's it's a 32 year old valve Okay.

Well, thank you for explaining that I know I'm always interested in what you do for some reason. I think it's interesting. I

have a a few items um one i see the i'm not calling you too soon that's okay so i see the pre-removal on the budget for 8550 bayside road uh where where was that did you there were there were actually trees brought to our attention um

that were kind of leaning over and one of them was dead in particular on adjacent property. So they're owned by the town, but they were dangerous. So we ended up taking up five trees, um, and cut them down. All right. And then, and they were in a single area in a single property. Yes, but there was quite a big area. It's in between the treatment plant and the adjacent neighborhood. So does that trigger going to the, Tree board then? It actually went through the permit process, but not to the tree board. All right.

Staying on trees. So, and sidewalks. So we had ridden through a short period of time. Like, I don't know why and who decided to put the size trees there. But, I mean, I don't know. Who's going to, like, that's a...

So I'll take the first question. It is the town's responsibility. We accept them and we sign off. And so I oversaw that project in every aspect, what we took over, and I feel confident in the water lines. We don't have the same problems as Richfield, all these different things. At the very last part of it, and I'll be honest, I didn't see it on any plan review till the end were those trees. And I went right to town in different areas. I totally agree. They're within a foot of the road When we snowplow, we try to snowplow curb to curb, and they're not even a year old, and they're in our way already, so I am in alignment that I would love to have them removed, but that was approved by Planning and Zoning. Typically, they would have been on the homeowner side, the back side, out of the town's right-of-way, but they weren't. They're going to be a problem if they're not already a problem. Everything else moving forward, I sat and we reviewed with the town engineer at the time on that project. Those trees were never on any plan that I saw until that project was 90% built. I saw a plan sheet that showed these trees in their location.

I can, since I live in the neighborhood, I think most of the residents of the neighborhood also don't like the trees because it's a funky agreement on maintenance. The HOA manages them, but they're just messy. They keep dying. And then you just have uproot all over the place. So I do think it's a conversation to have. I did see the individual, you know, she could have, I'm surprised she didn't come here and make her own comment. But, yeah, I mean, it's obvious that the town owns those sidewalks. It's like a known thing. When we voted to accept that neighborhood. Same with Chesapeake Village. The town owns those sidewalks as well.

Yeah, but if anyone planning and zoning is here or anything, I'd love to join in on the design. And I'm not pointing at Sarah, but truthfully, I understand you have to mitigate. You build a neighborhood. You have to plant trees. That is not... the place to put them. And so there's also species, right? You can get small trees. Some of these are just red oaks and sycamores that are going to be... Dogwoods would look a lot better. It's not going to happen in the heritage. So I want to be clear about that. The trees, I agree. They're going to be a problem, but we'll address it.

All right. I got one question real quick. I heard the real quick part. Okay. It will be quick. So under Railway Trail, you've got ground nesting bees were reported. Are those the cicada killers?

No, these were like the little tiny hornet type bees. And I say that because I met several citizens who have dogs and there's leash laws everywhere. But I know when they get back that part of the trail, they kind of maybe cut the leash loose and several dogs were stung. The town's doing what they can. We're proactive and we try to eradicate, but we can't be everywhere. So I just want the public to know that it seems like it's the year of the ground bees. Just be cautious if you're on that trail.

What, and there's just a statement here that says the staff is addressing these areas as needed. What do we do to address that?

We go get hornet sprayer from Sneeds, and we go up and spray it in the hole. But honestly, it lasts for a while, and they either relocate, or I can have gone back to the same hole myself, and a few days later, you know, unless we do some major eradication, there's not a whole lot we can do.

Pretty much wrapped up with IQ fiber repairs. Did that go pretty well as far as the scale of the project? I know I had an issue at my house, but I don't know how, like on a town level, how bad.

There were some hiccups, and I knew they were coming, but it's part of the project. There are areas outstanding. The main infrastructure is kind of done, but there's areas outstanding. There's some in Richfield Station. There's a little bit on Harbor Road. There's some areas... They physically couldn't get to. There's a couple areas they didn't have permission from the board, the HOA boards. But 90% of their project is done. But there are some outstanding areas.

I'm sorry, Mr. Mayor. I want to put one thing on public comment. On that, we had a discussion, and I did also email... It's Amelia about that. I think that the entire backside of Richfield Station where all the COAs are, the multiple COAs, don't have service for the IQ fiber. And I'm not 100% sure, but I believe that the problem may be easement agreements with the individual COAs. And so I just want to put it out there as a public comment that if there's anything I can do to help, so I'm happy to do it. Thank you.

All right. Let's move on to the water reclamation treatment plant report. I appreciate your – I always appreciate your photographs that make things understandable.

Well, I'll have my report from the agenda. Just have a few things to update. I'm working to get a replacement PLC component for that one unit that we had to replace. Weighing on costs back from Rexel, I've gotten pricing from two other vendors that With the aeration blower that went down or that we were having pulled to be rebuilt, it's right about on time for needing to be rebuilt. Those have been in for about eight, nine years, and generally you need to do a full rebuild at about 10 to 15 years. And those were on my radar for further out, but I think at least for this initial one, we'll probably have to look at doing number two next year once we get number one done this year. We'll have that in the budget for next year. Excuse me, I got the... Second week of school creep and crud kicking in. We did get the from the PFAS testing. We've got our biosolids test or results back for that over to Senegro. That's something that they need for part of their reporting as part of their process. These results came back lower than what we had in the May testing. So that's a good sign. We're still under limits that state and the state of Maryland and the Maryland Department of Environment require. Um, Working on the head works improvement project. I've been working with McCrone the engineering firm that provided us a technical specs for that project to get some of the documentation we may need when we start going forward with the community Community project funding and congressional directed spending grant Requests here in the next few months. There's a few documents that they need to be able to provide that would help with that process So if anybody has any questions, we don't have any questions.

I

Were the pictures of them rails, did you have them, they're finished being installed?

The handrails are still in progress. They just reached out to me yesterday. They had a order of anchors that were supposed to be coming in that somehow got lost. So they're waiting for those anchors to get to them, and then they should be able to come out and start working on them. That project wasn't due to be completed until October.

Yeah. All right.

All right. Anybody else? Okay, moving. Thank you very much. Always appreciate your reports. Kyle Engineer's report.

Speak to me. I'm trying, but it won't turn on. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. You have my report. Just a couple updates. One is on the water park. I received, as you'll recall, the conversation we had early on about the pile capacities, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, over there. Received the test data yesterday, analyzed it. It appears that all of the piles that we have restruck, the old piles to retest them, are of sufficient or exceeding capacity. That's great news. That's good news. I asked the design team structural engineer to give us a certification on that. I'm still waiting for that, but my analysis says we're in good shape.

That's excellent news.

Beyond that, we were there yesterday. We're starting to drive production piles, so that's also good news. They're coming up to spec as we expected at the lengths we hoped. So that's good.

That's nothing but good news.

You don't have any bad news? No bad news. Any further questions, I'm happy to take them.

Jamie has a question. I just had a super cool question. On the Seagate pump... I know it says in there that we've been encouraged to come up with a concept design and all that. Do we have any idea what's realistic time-wise now that we've kind of got to an agreement of what?

And are we still doing the helical piles? We are doing both helical and driven piles, and I believe the number was 166. That's a lot.

No more sinking.

No more sinking.

No more sinking concrete.

I wouldn't mind getting an owner's rep report. Is there a possibility we can get that?

Yeah, there's a Dropbox they've been putting all their information into, which we can certainly give the access to, and you can log into it. There's daily reports from every day.

And so there's a production schedule for the actual construction available? Yes.

There's not one available. We're still negotiating it. We were supposed to meet today. We got postponed until I think it's Tuesday next week. We're coming up with the final GMP pricing and the schedule, and they both go together. So when we have those to present, hopefully, certainly in the October meeting, we'll bring them to you. Great.

So your thought is construction begins in October?

Well, construction has begun. Okay.

Well, I know construction includes demo, but...

So we're driving piles now.

Yeah, so in our phase one construction, we had demo and pile driving. Right. I need to finalize the GMP price and the schedule and cut them loose. They're not waiting. They're moving forward.

I think they brought in the tank for the spray ground too, right?

Yeah. And Paddock's back there working in the back park a lot. So, yeah. They're not waiting for us to sign a contract. We know we're working together.

But they're moving and nobody is concerned up front. against a weather hurdle or there's no time hurdles on your radar?

There will be weather hurdles coming through the winter. To date, they've had zero weather delays. Great.

That's good.

Knock on wood.

Thank you, Wayne. Next is the Calvert County Sheriff's Office Twin Beaches Patrol. Lieutenant Phelps. Welcome back to the podium.

From the computer, no trees were harmed in the reading of this report for me.

We made up for it up here.

August, we had 229 calls for service at Chesapeake Beach. That's up from 189 in July. There was also 774 self-initiated calls yesterday. They had a few thefts, traffic-related incidences, some destruction of properties, a few assaults, and some other arrests throughout the town for trespassing and warrant services. There was an incident at the fast stop. They got a little bit of attention. I guess a disordered customer pulled a firearm on another customer. They were eventually charged and arrested and There are some other trespassings with warrant services and disorderly warrant services. Any questions? Okay. Thank you, sir.

Thank you. Good evening, sir. Welcome.

Good evening.

Greetings from Chief Stanton, President Gee. I guess everybody got their statistical report. The only thing we had is we had a pretty substantial fire the other evening over in Bayview Hills. Luckily, no one was hurt, no injuries, a little bit of property damage, but, you know, that can be replaced. Good thing about it was, you know, we had just from our station alone from North Beach, I counted, I was looking at the, everybody on the call, and we had 33 volunteers turn out that night. So you had a four-minute response, right? It was pretty quick. I was coming from Prince Frederick. I was in a meeting with another person down in Prince Frederick, and we were coming up here. And by the time we even got into the area, we already had two engines in our ladder truck on the scene. So like I say, good thing nobody was hurt. Did a substantial amount of damage to the one townhouse and a little bit of damage on both sides.

Well, any other questions? Thank you, sir.

Thank you for your patience. Have a good evening. Take care.

Next, we have the mayor's report. And I've just got a couple of things that I wanted to share with you. And maybe we'll be bringing it up on the screen. Anybody else got it controlled? It takes a village. This was at an event that took place I think on the end of August. new salon opening. And this is down at the Pink Building. And I was there. And this is in the place where the physical therapist used to be. And I think it's a great addition to the town because this is the first salon of this type in the town. So I was invited to be there. So I was. And so moving to this, this was a celebration at the Railway Museum. And this was just within the past couple of weeks. And a lot of what you see on the right there is that there's, I think, six or eight benches there that are reconstructed from the metal part was the original benches from, I think, from the train station. I'm not 100% sure it was that one or it might have been another one. And then the wood, but it was all sandblasted, cleaned up, repainted and new wood put on it. But there was a big celebration there, which I was able to attend. And so that's Chris and Scott in the center. And everybody else I know because I'm serving on that board, but I'm not as good at remembering names as I used to. And also the American Legion got a Post 206 hat aboard or a bench named after him. You can hit the next one. And that's Scott Deacon right there that was in here tonight in the center. Um, and so anyway, uh, Chuck and Betty McDonald got a bench and unfortunately it was just a few days before that. I don't know. Most of you probably don't know them, uh, pretty elderly. Uh, but Chuck died three days before this event took place, which was kind of a heartbreaker. Betty's still alive, but she's an invalid and she lives down on the south part of town. And so at any rate, Hilary Daly has been involved with the museum forever. And the Bates family, they also have been involved in it again. This was the opening day today of the Novel Cafe on the left which is right up the street here and they were here tonight. So I urge all of you to support our local businesses and they've really done a nice job renovating it and I have a feeling it's going to be very successful. No, you got ahead of me. Well, okay, but all of that was this morning, and so the pictures were taken this morning, and I haven't been home since then. So at any rate, that's it. That's the short mayor's report. Let's move on.

Thank you.

Thank you, Wendy. Thank you, Amelia. All right, the next item on the agenda is to vote on Ordinance 0-26-16, an ordinance of the Town Council of Chesapeake Beach amending the Town Code, Chapter 290, Zoning, Article 3, Zoning District, Section 290-11, Conditions and Standards for Conditional and Special Exception Uses to Implement Certain State Requirements Regarding Accessory Dwelling Units. Is there a motion for approval?

I'll motion for approval.

Is there a second? Second. Any further discussion?

Yes. Mayor, we're going to have some discussions and then probably a few motions. Motion to discuss? Motion to discuss.

Second. I'll second. Okay, go ahead.

So... I have written a few things up. I've talked to Anthony on a few items, and this goes into the work session and stuff like that, that I think we were discussing and some of the things we're in line with. Reviewing the I think you had left at this part in that in those codes there regarding the section 2 on the water and sewer allocations what I'm understanding is that the 1501 square foot Is where the capital connection charges of the $30,000 comes into play

Correct.

Correct. So we have the 650 square foot is a .25. The 651 to 1,000 is .5. The 1,000 to 1,500 is .75. And then the 1,501 is a 1. kind of having a graft in a discussion that the water and sewer quarterly bill Our water and sewer quarterly bill, this doesn't really address it, but if we were to have the tiered sizing match, if we maintain and keep a fixed tiered structure, so the 650 square foot would be a .25 fixed fee addition to it. And then the up to 1,000 square foot, it'd be a half. And then up to 1,500.75 inside of that structure.

Yeah, that's what this is saying. That's what this means. Okay.

Should we have a graft that shows it so that it's very clear and not misunderstood? I think...

Instead of a table?

So the table, does it show it or it shows that I'm understanding it to read for the allotment as far as the treatment plan?

No. That would be an internal policy. This is the external ordinance aligning it with the charges.

Are you asking, like, could there be an explicit statement that says this is in addition to your primary dwelling? So if you have an accessory dwelling unit that's under 650 square feet, you would have a primary dwelling of one, and then you'd have a .25, so it equals 1.25.

Yeah, just making sure that we are very clear in our conversation about it. I know that there are existing auxiliary dwelling units, and I want to make sure that we're all in discussion that we don't want to have the previous existing dwelling units and then the new auxiliary dwelling units And I want to make sure that if you're within the 75% size capacity and under a 1,500 square foot, that this applies to you, too, and your property as well. And I just want to make sure that this is what's being understood. Yes. But do you have a proposed change to this? A discussion. She wasn't here with the work session on this, so we're just trying to... But I do have some changes.

I think it might be better if you motion for the proposed changes, and then you can discuss those distinctly so that you can make sure you can get those in, and then we can move on so we can vote on them. That's where I was at. And in that way, it would be a better use of her time and ours, too, if we go for the motions.

But it sounds like I may have misunderstood it and it's in here and I just, it sounds like it is here and I don't need to make the motion. And that's what I was just from what I'm hearing.

Okay, good. You're correct. You did that really well.

Yeah, it's just a reassurance for the public that there is not going to be two set of standards for the auxiliary dwelling units. But if there's two auxiliary dwelling units that are the same size that doesn't fall in that 75%, is there any language that...

So this... Water and sewer allocation and charging scheme laid out here will apply to all accessory dwelling units in the town.

All ADUs? ADUs.

ADUs. Only ADUs.

Are you asking does it apply to rentals that are not ADUs?

Not so much rentals. I'm asking, so if someone is being charged maybe two full capital connection or two full fixed charges that they would then, depending on the size of their unit, there would be an adjustment and this would be the policy moving forth for everyone in town, new auxiliary dwelling units and existing dwelling units. So there would be some credits and billing credits in a quarterly, possibly.

It wouldn't be credits because credits would imply it's retroactive and it's not.

Well, not credits, but their bill would be reduced. There would be investments. It would not be credits because this is the ordinance setting the...

provided you all vote to move this forward, it would go into effect October 1st and then we would make the adjustments and alignment. And so the next bill that comes is in January based off of the uses from October through December. And so they wouldn't see those, everything would already be adjusted prior to receiving the bill that comes after the legislation goes into effect. And there would be adjustments for the registered ADUs.

And does this include non-

No, so an ADU has to be owner-occupied. If it's not owner-occupied, it is either not an ADU or it is an illegal ADU.

In the letter in to that discussing that at the work session for the common areas, and it wasn't added. Can you repeat that? Yes. Make a motion to add the letter N under 1N for all common areas including points of ingress and egress and shared spaces shall be subject to inspection and maintained in accordance with applicable licensing.

He went a little too fast there. I got it up to egress. We need a second before we... Well, no, I'm just trying to get it written down so I can understand what we're talking about.

So all common areas including parts of ingress and egress in shared spaces shall be subject to inspections and maintained in accordance with applicable licensing.

Is there a second? Begging for discussion. Okay, discussion.

If I may, I'm concerned that licensing Sort of licensing regulations and zoning regulations are getting conflated a little bit. I know we wanted to add a lot of stuff to this ordinance to really direct homeowners so that they could understand when they're developing. This is important and it needs to happen. And it's covered in the building code and the property maintenance code and the other licensing, rental licensing codes. And I am concerned that the zoning ordinance is not a good place for it because it can create confusion. It can create contradictory regulations because it's so specific the way you've drafted it. And all of these things are applicable based on other codes. And I just...

So we're governing the ownership... But we can't govern the inspections of the common area of an owner. So we're governing that for it to be an ADU, it needs to be owner-occupied. So we can govern the... ownership of the property, yet we can't govern that the common areas are inspected?

You can govern that. You just don't govern that through the zoning ordinance. So you do actually govern it through your building code. So Calvert County will come up and do an inspection. If areas become overgrown, code compliance will come out and do an inspection through your code, your property maintenance code. So you do actually govern all of these things already. What I'm saying is that they are better governed by those other ordinances rather than by the zoning code.

How does it apply to an ADU?

So it applies to an ADU that if there is, say, you have to have one parking spot, right? and that parking spot just say becomes in disrepair and it doesn't allow for the parking. When they have a licensing, that's a part of it inspected. If there's a entranceway, if there's stairs to an entranceway where we're saying ADUs is a structure outside, but ADUs could also be like on the example with a split foyer and someone finishes it off, that common area, where you would have a foyer, that would become inspectable too if it's an ADU. Right now, where she said licensing, it only happens at the doorway to your entrance. It doesn't inspect the common area. This would say if we are having an ADU, which is required to be an owner-occupied, which creates that definition, If at any time there's a licensing, be it a home business or rental license, there's a standard that that extends out to the common area. So you don't have smoking inside of a common area or whatever else it is, but it's defined in our legislative action.

So that would be regulated by your licensing regulations, which are under a separate code than the zoning code. And so there are inspections on all rental properties. I only know that because I hear them being talked about, but I don't know if, Dr. Smiley, you have more experience with that.

It sounds like there are, but I hear are suggestions to the rental properties aspect of the code as opposed to specifically the ADU, which is within zoning?

No, I'm very specific in what I'm doing. I discussed it in the work session. And if said ADU is used by a family member, it's not subject to any licensing, correct? So if there is subject to licensing, then that shared area shall be inspected and maintained. Like if you have somebody and they have an unfinished, say there's a larger home and you have two units upstairs and an uncontrolled space in the basement and the pipes freeze, that's a common area and that would be subject to inspections because if there was a licensing and you were running it out or if it was a home-based business.

If there was a violation, would that be a rental license violation or a zoning permit violation?

So it would be the condition that that area was a part of any licensing. So the parking space, which has been, it's in both this ordinance and home-based businesses in regards to parking, that would be a part of the inspection for either licensing, but it would be that this is also subject to the condition, such as the ownership of the property.

If you were to walk through what that looks like for someone applying to have an ADU, at what point are you saying yes or no? If you... Because they haven't constructed yet. They're coming to the town to say, can I do this, right?

Yes. So what they would do is they go through all what their permission is in order to get this building permit and the zoning permit, right? And that item right there is listed that that's an agreeable term that they're going to maintain, right?

But you're not proposing that we check it. You're saying that we just tell them that they have to do that.

We're saying that is a part of what our ADUs are, is the common area. So right now there's maybe people that have basement apartments throughout the entire county that are undocumented. There's no license for it, I believe, in Calvert County. But if Calvert County were to get licensing for it, Maybe we have basement apartments, potential or desire to have them in the town. So we're only mostly focused on an ADU as a structure. I'm making sure that this covers if it is a shared building platform with a second unit in it, that the common area within that second unit Is a part of an inspectable item, not just the entrance to the one unit, but any common areas are also would be subject at any time.

I don't understand what you're trying to do. I'm just wondering what the common areas would be.

For your for example, maybe there's a shared laundry right if there's a one utility because of one electrical service, right? accessibility to the electrical service or utility service so I think one of the items for dispute was the was The if someone were to shut off a tenants water, right and And so the inspectable item, if licensing were applicable, that's it. Not saying that it's required to have licensing. If they have family live there, they don't need to have it. But I believe that having this in here protects us in the long and the big picture.

Okay.

I think what he's trying to say is when you write a permit for an ADU, it would include these areas. So your motion could be, Dan, to say permits for an ADU will include all common areas, including... Would that be something that could accommodate Dan's... I'm just trying to... You're going to write a permit and you're going to draw the property on the permit. Unless the permit doesn't even have a drawing on it.

the permit is going to require drawings i'm just trying to think through the administrative implications while i'm standing up here sorry i'm just coming no yeah i didn't know about this beforehand but yeah I guess my concern here is how are the common spaces being defined? What are the regulations for those common spaces that I am implementing? And so that's I don't know that it doesn't work. I just, right here, thinking about it, my questions are, how do I implement that? What am I looking for on the permit that I'm supposed to be reviewing, and what are the standards for that?

So, we've reduced down to one parking spot, right?

Yes, you did.

Yes, so we have the one parking spot, right? And then it would be access to their doorway, right? Yes.

Right. And looking for those things anyway.

Correct.

Yeah.

And then just say there was a one house and it was a split foyer, like I said, and they closed off the where the half steps go up and down. And now it's a foyer entrance. Right. So that would then become a common spaced area.

Right, and that would be inspected by the rental inspector, yes.

But it would be defined as a common area. So if there was stairs.

In the permit, okay.

In the permit. If there was stairs, the stairs, if there was an ADA access ramp, whatever the conditions that they applied for would also be a part of the inspections and permitting.

Could I suggest that you would say all common areas, including points of ingress and egress, entrances, parking areas, and shared spaces shall be denoted on the permit application?

I mean, I think that's, yeah. I mean, I think if that works for you, I think that's enough of a win for me.

That is better than me inspecting it.

Correct. And then that can be handled on the other one. I appreciate that. I think that's close enough.

All right.

Make sure I got you straight. You said all common areas including points of ingress and egress, entrances, parking areas, and shared spaces shall be denoted.

On the permit application.

On the permit application.

We're just noted. I don't know why I said denoted.

I don't know why you said denoted.

Does it still be letter N or can we just add it?

It will still be N. It will be letter N. I'd have to make a motion to amend or my.

Or just withdraw it and then make a new motion.

I was going to say we can add it to E. If you withdraw it. I'm going to go ahead and withdraw my motion for N and then make a motion to amend. You make a motion to amend because I know exactly what she said.

All right. I think Alyssa has something.

Your mic on.

The point that it goes to the site plan that's required in subsection E, I think. And so adding it there would be, seems to me to be the logical place to put it. A site plan is required that shows X things.

Yes. Modify E. Correct. Correct.

Subsection 1E in 290-11A.

And it would say must include. So would the site plan attach to the common areas inside the structure?

You would want to say a site plan is required. The site plan must include all common areas.

Your concern is that because it's interior, there's no way to...

I'm just making sure that a site plan includes that and it's not because the site's on the outside, not internal.

They'll have to provide the plan for where it's going to be located on the site, which means that even if it's going to be located in their house, they have to show that in their house. And they are going to have to provide interior drawings. That's part of the site plan requirement for a dwelling unit.

Make the motion so we can do something else.

All right. I think you're probably the best one to give us the language.

You can be quiet.

Well, all right, Anthony. Let's talk language.

All right. So we're going to make a motion to amend AE to read a site plan as required And then.

Comma showing.

Comma showing. Can we say including instead of showing?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Including what? Including instead of showing.

Including all common areas including points of ingress and egress, entrances, parking areas, and shared spaces. Period.

I think that's it.

As noted.

You don't actually have to say that because you said it.

I can just leave it right there? Period. All right, so let me say it again. All right, all common areas include points of ingress, negress, entrances, parking areas, and shared spaces.

I'll second that.

All right. Are we ready to move forward? Let's vote on the amendment. All in favor of the amendment, say aye. Aye. Aye. All right, let's vote on the amended. I didn't finish. Okay, all in favor of the amended ordinance.

We have other ones, too.

I'm sorry, what?

We have other motion to amend. Are we just doing this one, right?

All right, we've done that one.

We've done that one. Okay, so go ahead. What you got next?

You got more?

Yeah. You reading it? M? Yeah, 1M. Motion to amend 1M to change to an existing accessory structure with alley-only vehicular access may be converted to an ADU, provided it meets all applicable town, county, and state requirements, including public health and safety standards. Second.

All in favor of the amendments or discussions? Sarah?

I was just going to say, you could just delete M. Okay. Rather than add extra language in. And it will then be applicable to all those things, I'm sorry, town, county, and state requirements, including public health and safety standards, will be applicable to it. And you don't have to have that sentence in there at all.

All right. I'm going to withdraw my motion. Make a motion to amend the ordinance to delete letter M. Second.

All in favor of the motion, say aye.

Aye. Opposed? Aye. You got two opposed.

Three. All three opposed? And three in favor? Huh. Lori, John, and Eric. I'll break the tie by agreeing to it. I say yes. All right.

Anything else? That's our first tiebreaker since we've been in office.

I think that should be it.

Anything else before we vote on the amended ordinance? All in favor of the amended ordinance say aye. Aye. All opposed? The ayes have it. Thank you.

Thank you. There's been a lot of work over the last year, so thank you for all your work on this.

Thank you. Now we're in compliance, right?

Yes.

All right. All right. Now we're going to consider voting adoption of Ordinance 0-26-16, an ordinance of the Town Council, Chesapeake Beach, Mending Chapter 263, Urban Forest, Section 263-4, prohibited acts and permits to limit restrictions on properties where their actions do not significantly impact the tree's canopy. Is there a motion for approval?

Motion to approve.

Second. We have a motion and a second. Discussion? Discussion.

In general, I'm in support of the concept here, except that this ordinance introduces an automatic approval clause and I am almost never in support of automatic approvals. Automatic approvals invite risk in the form of unintended permissions Inequitable application of the law and the bill and the ability Or risk that accountability is avoided When unwanted actions by property owners take place in this case and automatic Approval of a permit to request a Removal of a large number of trees could legalize that removal Without review which is the very outcome that the ordinance and tree board aimed to avoid adding additional risk We have recently acknowledged a need to improve permitting processes. Amelia, thank you for following that through, and now we have a system. However, that identifies that things can happen, and sometimes permits don't get reviewed, and to have a permit of this type come through, not be reviewed, and then the consequence is that a large STAND OF TREES IS REMOVED UNINTENTIONALLY IS NOT SOMETHING THAT I BELIEVE THE TREE BOARD WAS STOOD UP TO DO. AND SO I WOULD LIKE TO MOVE TO STRIKE THE LANGUAGE OF THIS ORDINANCE THAT CREATES THE AUTOMATIC APPROVAL. And I don't know, is anybody interested in discussing that?

Tell me where we are exactly in the ordinance. I'm going to strike D. E, I believe.

Echo. 263-4E. Okay. And my motion would be when I make it to remove the language after 45 days. says any application as to which the tree board has taken no action within 45 days shall be deemed approved unless the tree board notifies the applicant before the expiration of the 45-day period that an additional period not exceeding 15 days is necessary for the appropriate consideration Is to remove what you just read that correct right is there a second to that I

Motion to amend fails.

Motion to amend. Tree board shall... Where are you? E. Still on E. Tree board shall issue a recommendation on any application requesting the removal of three or more trees within 60 days of receipt, except for applications involving trees reported as dead, for which a recommendation shall be issued within 45 days. And then... Is that... I got one more thing for you. Any applications as to which the tree board has taken no action within 60 days shall be deemed approved unless the tree board notifies the applicant before the expiration of the 60-day period that an additional period not exceeding 15 days is necessary for appropriate consideration. That would be my motion. Is that one amendment or two? That's all the amendments in E. I don't think there's two. I will put it all together. So what I'm pretty much doing is changing the 45 days to 60 days and adding in an exception for reported dead trees to be within 45 days.

I had an exception for what?

Dead trees. If any trees are reported as dead, then we don't wait 60 days for dead trees.

Second. Okay, Dan has seconded. We have a motion and a second. Any further discussion?

Do we ever have a situation where the tree could be hazardous even if it's not dead? Like, should we add the language and or hazardous to dead trees?

So under my authority, if I deem it hazardous, period, dead, alive, leanings, then we can expedite that permit and follow up later. There's still mitigation and things to be done, but if I deem it hazardous in any way to public or private, we can expedite that permit.

That's kind of what I'm getting at. I think we should add and or hazardous to the word dead to encompass...

So let me just point out that this sentence, this section about the recommendation applies to three or more trees.

Oh, yeah. That's true. I guess we could have three dead trees.

You could. Okay. That's true. That's true. You could have three dead trees.

Three more trees, 60 days, 45 days of anything that's reported dead, and you got 75 days instead of 60.

I'll just say and or hazardous.

Let's roll.

Can I motion to amend it to say and or hazardous?

You would have to withdraw or you'd have to make another one.

I've been motioned to second it. Let's vote so we can move on.

All in favor?

No. Just be still.

We have a motion, we have a second. All in favor of the motion signify by saying aye. Aye. All opposed? Opposed. We have one opposed. All right, did you have something else, Jonathan?

No, I mean. Okay, that's good. Let's move on.

All right, we have an amended ordinance. All in favor of the amended ordinance say aye. Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it. Thank you, council. One to go. Then it'll be dinner time. Breakfast. That's all I've had today. Ordinance O-26-17, Ordinance of the Town Council, Chesapeake Beach, Mending the Town Code, Chapter 290, Zone 3, Zoning Districts, Section 290-11, Conditions and Standards for Conditional and Special Exception Uses to Permit the Sale of Certain Items Incidental to a Home Occupation. Is there a motion for approval? Motion to approve. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second.

Second.

Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second

Yes, the discussion. I'll just preface this. On many occasions, I've voiced concern that ordinances related to home occupations that have been presented for consideration to this council prioritize a desire to allow businesses involving regulated items and products to operate in residential neighborhoods. over the priorities of everyday homeowners who have a right to peaceful enjoyment of their home. It is the intent of my colleagues to legalize uses involving firearms

Point of order, there is no intention in this ordinance at all to legalize any firearms of such. We don't have that authority.

Okay, I get 30 minutes. You can talk after that.

I can still make a point of order against how you're doing.

Point of order, that's a rebuttal.

It is a point of order. Point of order, you are out of order. I don't even understand that. It's the mayor's call. It's the mayor's call.

You have to stay within the... You can say what you were about to say.

I don't have a rebuttal. I'm just saying point of order. She's stating that we are changing a code and we're introducing an ordinance to allow firearms. We don't have the authority to do that. What I'm saying is that this is purely removing that exemption on home use. So what she just stated is incorrect, like factually incorrect.

It is not currently allowed. If anybody goes back and watches the meeting in April where we removed a lot of protections in residential areas for homeowners, you billed this as a restoring of uses. This does a lot more than just restore the old home occupation.

But if you also go back, you would see that we said we accepted that and that we would bring up future edits as we need fit. So the current code is the current code, and that now we're bringing forward a separate one to adjust. You can vote no, but what I'm still, the reason for my point of order, it goes back to is we're not... allowing anybody to manufacture. That is not our authority. As you stated, what we are doing is permitting, if it's authorized legally in the state of Maryland, we are allowing it as a home business if it's allowed. So we are not authorizing, we don't have the authority to give somebody, I can't go to Jay and say, Jay, you can now go make firearms. We do not have that authority, but you stated we do.

Correct. I'm saying that you, what we're doing here- is we are allowing businesses that are typically regulated with controlled, because they have controlled aspects to them, into residential neighborhoods. We do not have to do that. That is the intent of this council is to create the situation in our residential communities that businesses that operate and relate to controlled items may operate in a residential neighborhood. I have never been in favor of that. I did not vote for that in April. This was billed as a simple restoration, and that's not what it's doing. It's restoring much more.

You didn't vote in favor of the regulated part?

No, I didn't, but we're bringing it back. We've spent a lot of man hours on this, a lot of planner hours. I reached out to all of you to ask what exactly could be sold as an incidental item, what is the volume of the items that could be for sale in these residential businesses that have been vastly expanded. I appreciate your shot earlier about the cottage laws, but if you do go back and look in that April meeting, I requested an ordinance from the planner more akin to what the cottage laws of Maryland were on several occasions. This is not cottage laws. This is much more more intense. And I just want the public to understand that that is what we are doing here. Don't bill it as something else. And there is a firearm business that has petitioned to us currently. It is not allowed to operate. And once we pass this ordinance, it will be allowed to operate. That is what is going on. And when I asked you and every other person on this council and the town planner to describe to me what we are allowing, not a single person could do it.

Okay. No, no, no, no. Wait a minute. Because I got asked a question, too. Eric got asked a question. The question was, will repairs include silencers and other customizations? What about rapid fire capabilities? How many firearms can be on the premises at once? How many repaired or modified firearms can leave the premises at once? The answer was silencers are under NFA license, and the dealer will have to have that in order to do so, and they cannot alter serial numbers on them. Maybe rapid fire capabilities are expressly prohibited. There is no number of how many only that 30% of a home can have materials designated for a home business. Also making a distinction of self versus repair would be important to your ask. Her response was, I didn't initiate this. And my response was you initiated this conversation right now. We're not going to play theater. All right. So when I was asked if anybody else was going to be in favor, Of going against it, no, because those in favor believe that the federal and state regulations cover this particular issue. This makes them more responsible, subjective. I would ask if there was interest in the town added a maximum inventory distinction for firearm sale in particular. So what I'm going to say right now is this. Either there's somebody that says what we're going to vote on or we make our vote and move on.

Well, hold on, hold on. I would like to make a comment, Mayor. So I would like to add on to that, because you invoked what you had messaged to us. I would say partially you reached out to me at 3.27 yesterday to ask this question, and I'm working. So you asked me a question related to this question. I would say if it was really that serious of a concern, you would have reached out more than 24 hours prior to the vote. That's going to occur. You've had all month to do some research. I would say Google also works as well. But here's what I responded to. But here's what I responded back to, just so it's known. I said, your question, again, was what can and cannot be sold as a firearm and what volume? I said, I can't speak to state and federal firearm requirements. They could only do what they are legally licensed and permitted to do under those laws. This ordinance doesn't give them the authority. It only allows them to operate as a home business if they meet the applicable laws and licensing requirements. You can't ask me 24 hours to a meeting to explain to you everything related to the gun laws in Maryland. I don't work in that environment. That is not a responsibility I have. I would encourage you, like I did yesterday, to do a little bit of research on your own and stop expecting everybody to hand everything to you because you don't take the effort and time to do your due diligence in a timely manner.

Thank you.

I have a question. Wait a minute. Everybody gets to talk. I haven't talked yet. Would you please allow her to respond quickly?

You motioned to get into this business of broadening the home occupations. We've seen this ordinance twice now because it was such a in April when we did it the first time. Our town planner said that she was not authorized to do the research for us and bring us the information that we need to understand what we're permitting. So right now, thanks to this style of conducting business that you initiated, We are now reviewing permitted uses in residential neighborhoods that our planner is not authorized the hours to help us understand. Every time you bring some ordinance that is potentially irresponsible, because it's often... You know, the editorial comments can be suppressed, if you don't mind.

The sarcastic comments, would you please suppress those?

Would you ask the entire council to do that?

I don't need to. You're the one speaking.

Okay. Councilman Schultz took a hot shot about the cottage laws earlier in the meeting. In the April meeting, if anybody were to go back and watch it, they would see that I requested information about the cottage laws. So I am not against cottage laws. This is much more intense. I believe it's irresponsible. That was my comment. I think that the way that it was being billed is modernization is an understatement to what we're going to be allowing. And then there is still no understanding about what other controlled items in residential areas can be sold. Is it adult entertainment? Is it...

alcohol and other consumables what are we permitting do people get permit for porn i mean what are we asking right now dan what do you want to say please so as i mentioned i'm the one that introduced the word regulated i did it as a thing so i have a question for sarah would you uh I am under the assumption that we regulate trees in the town. We regulate trees. We're a tree city. We just passed an ordinance regarding trees, and there's a regulation in place for trees.

Yes.

So in my thoughts in regards to regulation, right, and putting regulating in there, it's It was to give people more permissions to allow for that to happen. And if the town so chose to pick up a task such as regulating an item, it would be the town's job, the work of us as a council, to create a framework and legislation to regulate such things like the tree ordinance and the tree city. And so it wasn't to supersede any other authority, but it was for us to say if we want to have control over something and regulate it, then we should do so. But if we don't do the work, then we choose to defer to the authority that has done the work. And we... choose to do the work and regulate our trees. And I know it's kind of a broad thing, but I wasn't trying to say what is and isn't allowed. What I was saying is that we define by our actions, by our work, what we choose to regulate. So if Lori wants to take initiative to create a regulation guidelines, I'd be in support of that. But within this, I've made the statement that I made the word because of what we had. The conversation that's going with the direction it is, it's making me question if I should change my vote because I don't want to seem like I'm participating in that. I've made my mind up what I was going to vote in this, and I... I don't know. I just, I would appreciate us to kind of define what our task is.

Well, we have an ordinance that we're considering. We have a, I believe we have a motion and a second for an amendment. And wait a second, Eric. And I mean, unless you're going to correct me if I'm wrong, because I could be. Okay. And so what we're doing now is considering the amendment. And somebody restate the amendment. We're in discussion.

We're just getting our voice heard.

All right. Then we're not going to move any further forward without either a motion to vote on this ordinance or a motion for amendment. So if somebody wants to make a motion to make an amendment, speak up.

I would like to make a statement for the record.

No, it's either going to be a motion for an amendment or we're going to vote on the ordinance.

Per the town charter section 7-11, as your town administrator instructed us to do, we wanted to make a statement for the record.

You make that statement once you vote against it, though, because I helped write that one. Let's go. How long is this going to take?

I'm opposed to the legislation before me because it will legalize allowing a business involving firearms and potentially other control. Only two of those council members voted to remove it from the agenda. And at that meeting, at the 2 hour and 20 minute mark, I made a statement for the record. The statement was, as presented and amended, this ordinance is too confusing to consider. And that is paraphrased.

Is that your statement?

That statement for the record on April 17th was not included in the minutes. End of statement.

Okay. Now, Sharon, do you have everything you need? Well, it's on the recording.

So if you pass this as is...

Firearm or items that are, what is the phrase, incidental to the service can be sold. So there would have to be a service involved. So if that service is customizing firearms. then the things that are the same as your shampoo and hair gel for a firearm that are legal, right, per federal and state regulations could be sold. However, you could not just sell guns out of your home because that's not a service. It's a retail business.

Right. So if he's repairing guns and cleaning guns, he can sell guns.

I don't think he can sell guns. He can sell cleaning cloths. You gave me something I can associate with it. But he can't sell the gun itself because he's offering the service for the gun.

We do still have protections in place.

You do have protections in place, and like I said, you have to have a distinction between what his service is and what the selling thing is. And the one thing that we could have done if anybody wanted to look into it was make the stipulations on if it was selling, what they were selling, like how many you would have on it. But the guy that we're talking about, since this is really being focused on one person, has a job where he wants to repair firearms. which he is licensed by the state to do. And there are certain things that he cannot do unless he has federal licenses before. So those regulations would be in place. And you still have to deal with this HOA after we get out of the way of it.

And I think that we've beat this to death. And I would like to now call the question. All in favor of the ordinance, please signify by raising your hand. I see four hands raised. All opposed, raise your hand. I see two opposed. The motion passes, or the ordinance passes four to two. Let's move on. Next, reports of officers, boards, and committees. And we really need to make, sooner or later, we have to modify our charter so we can change the order of this agenda. This is crazy to have this done this way. So, Planning and Zoning Commission. Y'all are going to make her do it again.

Sarah. Sarah.

So the Planning and Zoning Commission is still working through the modernization and simplification of the land use table and all the things that got pulled into that orbit. They have made some changes after the first public hearing, and they've had more discussion. And because they want it to be an open public process, they're having another public hearing this month. After that public hearing, they will review it again, and they hope to be able to approve it to send it to you all at their October meeting. And then we'll have to walk through it, and that will take some time because it is a substantial document.

Thank you. Questions? Thank you very much. Board of Appeals, we note that a variance hearing is scheduled for September 24th, 2026. Is there anything else on Board of Appeals? Okay, let's move forward. Chesapeake Beach Oyster Cultivation Society. I'm sorry you had to wait so long to get to this.

Fifth grade field trips have kicked off very smoothly. The only sort of challenge we have is the noise from the construction site. The kids meet at the pavilions for about a half an hour at the beginning and a half an hour at the end, and that's been a little bit of a challenge, but there's not much you can do about it. We have our MGO program is coming. The delivery of all of our spat this year is coming up September 29th. We have doubled the number of people who have volunteered to take on our program. That's great. So we're going to have about 55 cages of spat spread throughout Chesapeake Beach and local area waterways this year. And because we're so big, they're going to deliver to us. We don't have to drive to Annapolis and pick them up this year. Perfect. I just wanted to kind of back what Ryan was saying earlier. I did not pay him to come here to do this presentation, but everything he said is the foundation, the basis of what Seabox is all about. And that's why we do what we do is all of that restoring. He does have a test program going in North Beach on building an artificial reef, oyster reef for their beaches. So it'll be really interesting to see how that turns out. Maybe we can support it by doing it here.

And I don't know whether you know this or not, but when I served before, I think a couple of decades ago is when CBOX was formed, and I was very involved in the formation of CBOX. So I would enjoy the opportunity to sit and chat with you sometime to get up to speed with everything that's going on now, if you have the opportunity. We can do that. Thank you. Sure. Anybody got any questions?

Any questions?

Thank you very much.

Oh.

Thank you.

It's my favorite volunteer thing to do.

It's a great field trip.

If you want to make this roll real fast, I can do Green Team 2 at the same time, even though I don't think it's the same order. We have, Samilia mentioned, Tuesday night at the library, we're going to have a speaker come in and talk about stormwater control in people's private backyards. We have a lot of hills in this town, so people got top of the hill, bottom of the hill, near the water, so there's a lot of erosion to go on. And then September... Two weeks from this Saturday, we have Pedal and Pathway pickup, so anybody who wants to come out and volunteer, bring your kayak, bring your canoe, or walk on the trails, we've got a lot of stuff we're going to clean up around town. I think there's a third thing. I don't know the date. It's two weeks from Saturday. So, Sue, I challenged...

Everybody come out and get the most track. And he said he'll bring a trip to celebrate the win. Last year, so I already got mine kicked out. So, yeah. So, higher than that, I'm already, I don't what I'm getting this year, but I'm going to see who gets the biggest trash call out of the council day in his tribute.

So that's what we've got going on right now. And I know there's a third thing I was supposed to mention. I can't remember.

Face the beaches? We will both.

That's part of, oh, no, it was the erosion control on the creek. Middle of October on a Saturday, we are going to be planting a bunch of plants by June. Where the pollinator gardens are, because there's a lot of water and erosion in that area, we got a grant from the state to do erosion control, and they're going to prep the ground, and we're going to put a lot of new plants in there to protect against the erosion that's going on in the creek. And we will be looking for volunteers because we have a lot of plants to plant. So that should be going out soon. I think Martha's going to send out something in the e-blast to get some volunteers for that.

Thank you very much.

I think that's it.

Thank you. Awesomeness. Economic development.

Yeah, we've got a great event this weekend and welcome our new businesses. Thank you, everybody.

Short and sweet. Twin Beach Community Health Coalition.

We are wrapped up for our events for the year. We had our overdose awareness event. International Overdose Awareness Day event, August 30th or the 31st, whatever day that we were at the opening at Horizons on the Bay. Very well attended. A lot of people came out. Very heartfelt. It was great to be able to be there and have that one-year anniversary for the Hope mural over here. We're about to start getting ready to prep for next year. We're going to be looking at events for ALS, Men's Depression, Veterans Mental Health, and another International Opioid Awareness Day event. So we'll keep you up on that.

Thank you very much, Anthony. Walkability Committee.

We are working on celebrating Walktober. We'll be doing outreach to the community and inviting people to the Step Challenge. We will also be collecting information from anybody who wants to provide it about their various walks around town so we can get information of where we can put our money. And then on the front of our package is... Of course, the Chesapeake Village sidewalk, front and center, highlighted. If you recall, when we did have a contractor identified by SHA to complete that sidewalk, Councilman Schultz called me up within the week and derailed the entire year of work. Point of order. I don't understand.

You can't do point of order.

You did. You called me up the week before.

This is...

We were able to approve a grant, an SHA grant worth millions of dollars, and you asked 100 questions and misquoted facts in the paper, and that grant was declined by this council. However, we do look forward to learning what SHA will say about a different grant that the town administrator applied for, and I hope that we get good news. If we don't get good news, we have a safety issue in Chesapeake Village. So I'm interested in getting input from all my fellow council who decided to forfeit millions of dollars in grant money for a safe connection, how we're going to solve that problem.

Thank you. I did have a question related to a couple of the items on here just because, you know, when our group got together, we had prioritized a lot of money. So we put a lot of money into walkability, you know, just like we did with the water park and Kellams and a whole bunch of other initiatives. And I think there's, you know, there's the $300,000 you asked for annually. There's $120,000 listed in here. However, I wanted to go back to make sure I'm not mistaken, but I looked at all the updates going back to January at the beginning of this year, and your report... is almost verbatim the exact same. And when we're getting updates, we're only getting updates on that. So I do have questions related to like, what are we doing about the sidewalk on Cox Road? Are we approaching any of those initiatives? There was talks about adding some additional sidewalks elsewhere. So outside, and I understand your frustration with me for asking questions. You also ask a lot of questions related to activity. So I think it's fair that you also be asked questions related to stuff because I had questions However, I think though you still owe it to our community to look at other initiatives minus the walk from your neighborhood out to the town. The rail extension, we're all, everybody's on board with that. There's no way there's, and then the other one, is the FIDS that you list. So you're prioritizing something that the council has discussed as the first two pages and not any of the other stuff that we can actually action off of and that would be beneficial for our community. So I'm still talking, but I would appreciate if you let me finish. But I... I think that instead of attacking me, because I mean, one of yours, you blatantly just called me out. Instead of attacking me, I've offered to partner with you. I've offered to help you solve these problems, but I can't offer to do it when you... That's it.

You called me up and you said, guess what? You don't have the votes. And a year's work was derailed. So yes, we have been on the Chesapeake Village sidewalk for almost two years now because...

This is not going to be a free-for-all. This is not going to be a free-for-all. Council members, please restrain yourselves. Can we get through with this agenda?