Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good morning, everyone. It's May 28, and we're starting our planning board meeting. Our first item this morning is 1A, adoption of resolutions. We have two. The first is Chevy Chase Garden Plaza site plan number 8, 1984-001B, where all board members except Commissioner Hedrick can vote on this one. Do I have a motion for approval of the Chevy Chase Garden Plaza site plan?

I move for the approval of the Chevy Chase Garden Plaza site plan.

Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. The ayes have it, 4-0-1. The second is the Montgomery Pearl sketch plan, where all members can vote except all commissioners can vote on that one. So do I have a motion for approval of the Montgomery Pearl sketch plan?

I'll move to approve the sketch plan. Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. The ayes have it, 5-0. Next, we have approval of minutes. Minutes of May 7th, 2026, all commissioners can vote except Commissioner Hedrick. Do I have a motion for approval of the minutes of May 7th?

Move to approve the minute.

Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. The ayes have it, 4-0-1. And next, we have two record plats. Board members can vote on these two. It's subdivision plat number 220-250720, River Road Estates, and subdivision plat number 220-260640, Woodside Park, where staff is recommending approval of these two record plats. Do I have a motion for approval of these two plats? Move to approve the record plots.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. Let's have it 5-0. Next, we have one regulatory extension request. This morning, it's the Mahon Village Preliminary Plan and Final Forest Conservation Plan Extension Request Number 5, where staff is recommending approval of the extension. Do I have a motion to approve this extension request? I'll move to approve the extension request.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Ayes have it 5-0. Next, we have our roundtable discussion by our Parks Director, Mitty Figueredo.

Good morning. The opening slide in today's parks director's report is evocative of all of the rain we've had recently. And this adorable child seems to have the right attitude about it. I can't say that I enjoyed it quite as much as she did. But we, of course, really did need the rain. So every five years, we do a park experience survey. It's part of our updated PROS plan, and it's that time again. We take a lot of time and care to design a survey that helps us understand how residents use our parks, what matters most to them. and where they see gaps in access and amenities and programming. And then we use that information to prioritize our future investments in parks. The survey is open now. It closes in June. A draft of the full report is due to the state of Maryland. at the end of the year in December of 2026, and then the final report in the summer of 2027. And we will be coming back to the board to brief you all prior to the submission of the draft report. And the Trail Ambassador Program applications are open for the upcoming summer sessions. As you all know, this is a two-week summer volunteer and mountain biking recreational program for high school students ages 14 and up, and it's led by Todd Bauer, who is our Trail Volunteer Program Coordinator. In the morning, the kids work on trail improvement projects, and in the afternoon, after lunch, they participate in group bike rides where they work on their bicycling skills. They learn trail etiquette, safety, mechanics, and just have a great time together. They can also earn up to 60 SSL hours, as you know. SSL hours are required for graduation. And we have two sessions that have 10 spots each. One will be in Wheaton, and that session is June 22nd to July 3rd, and another in Germantown from August 10th to the 21st. May 16th, we had, we and about 500 of our close friends, gathered to celebrate the opening of the Ovid Hazen Wells Rec Park. We had free carousel rides. I think a couple hundred people got free carousel rides. Senator Zucker gave us a proclamation. People had a great time. There was also, so the carousel opened, but we also formally opened the new skate park. We picked our winners of our best trick video contest. And we also had a live band playing right next to the skate park. There was a skate jam with prizes. We had a clinic for newer skateboarders and there was a free raffle for a Tony Hawk signed skateboard. Waters Landing local park in Germantown recently received a little bit of what we would call an artistic refresh. We have a new picnic shelter there. It's quite lovely. You can see it in that image. And that's some original artwork called Creek to Lake by a Maryland artist, Graham Projects. This is a paving mural, and it's intended to... bring to life the construction of Little Seneca Lake with a colorful rendering of the landscape and the fish. And it's intended to teach families and park visitors about the local ecosystem, but also creates a stronger sense of place, and I think it's quite beautiful. On May 15, our activation and our boriculture teams partnered to host, once again, our Canopy Connections program. This one was at Clarksburg Neighborhood Park, and it's intended for park visitors 55 and over. This program began a couple of years ago in 2024. It was a big hit. I know that this time, for sure, it was sold out. It may have been in times past as well. It is an experience that gives the participants a chance to try something totally different. I know I've never actually done this. They learn what it takes to safely a large tree just like a professional and they learn new skills like ropes and knot tying and proper climbing techniques. But of course, all under the watchful eye and support and guidance of our expert professional tree climbers. Every single person who participated in the program got to climb a tree and we got incredible feedback. People really had a great time. They love this program. And I love that it's a partnership among different sections in the Parks Department. A couple of weeks ago, oh, there's Tricia McManus. A couple of weeks ago, the Carolyn Freeland Park Renovation Project received a Maryland American Society of Landscape Architects Merit Award. The design consultant team was led by HCM Architects, and you can see a couple of our staff. There's Tricia McManus, who's since retired, and Lucas Varney. We also had an all anglers fishing rodeo. We hosted an inclusive annual all anglers fishing rodeo at Kings Local Park, which has an ADA accessible fishing pier. That was also on Saturday, May 16th. This was another partnership. This was between Program Access and our Black Hill Discovery Center. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources actually stocks this pond with fish. I don't know that they caught a lot of fish that day, but you can see that everybody had a great day by the water. We had a number of volunteers who were helping out, and we had 25 anglers come and fish. We're going to be talking about this a little bit more this morning, but the fiscal year 27 operating budget was approved by the council on May 21st. Just a quick recap, we had requested a 6.3% increase over last year. That was a same services budget. The county executive had recommended a 4% increase. That covered our compensation, debt service, some of our Wheaton headquarters rent expenses, and a portion of our risk management. Ultimately, the council adopted a 4.8% increase. That covered the remainder of risk management. as well as our operating budget impacts. That's really important. But over $2 million remains unfunded. And that $2 million includes all of our contractual and inflationary increases, as well as our utility increases, and some of the funding that we asked for to allow us to fill existing positions that are currently vacant. You can see there are some of the things that we expect to see in terms of impacts to services. But after this, Kate Bentley, our budget manager, operating budget manager, is going to be presenting to you all a series of some budget adjustments that will aim to cover some of the shortfalls that we expect to see in fiscal year 27 with some funding that we have this year in fiscal year 26. And with that, Thank you very much, and answer any questions if you have them.

Thank you, Director Figueredo. You guys always have wonderful pictures, and you have such a variety of services to our residents, something for everyone, all ages, all abilities. So that's so important in a county where we try to be so inclusive and focus on equity. I was at the Ovid Hazen Wells ribbon cutting for the carousel in the skate park. Just such a wonderful event. Again, a very diverse crowd came out to attend. So thanks for all what the park does in creating and maintaining our great park system. Any other comments and questions from the board?

Yeah, just I was at the OVTASEN also, and I had to be there because this was a project in making for years. And when they opened the carousel, you know, Councilmember Fritzson and Balcombe and I, we were the first one. Not the first one, but we were on the first ride. That's what I wanted to say. I have some pictures shows my face. It's just the whole face is a smile. So it's beautiful. It's a beautiful park. And kudos to all the people that worked hard to make it happen. That's one of the enjoyment that you could get for working. You see the product of years and years of hard work eventually come and people enjoying it. It's absolutely gorgeous. I have to take my grandkids there. Just in regard to budget, I don't know if you have had a summary of how the impact is. I know that you had some labs that you wanted to fill. I asked this question, but I don't remember exactly. Are you able to get some of the labs filled?

Yes, they gave us some of that funding that I think will allow us to maybe fill four or five positions. So they took us down, I think, 9.5 or 9%. 9%. So we remember we were at 10% lapse, and we were basically at 10% vacancy. We had asked them to take us down, to allow us to fill enough positions to go down to an 8% lapse. They gave us enough funding to go down to a 9% lapse, which again is like maybe four or five positions, which, listen, we're grateful for that. However, I will say that we will probably very quickly, again, because that's only four or five positions, be at our laps, which essentially will mean we will have to stop hiring.

Yeah, the thing is that usually the normal average, as I remember, was like around 7%. Around 7%, yeah. 7%, 7.5%, correct. Yeah. I think that's way above, and maybe we could try again for next year.

For sure, for sure, because it has an impact on services. I mean, people do the work in the parks. They're human beings who are running the equipment and cutting the grass and fixing the equipment. And so without those positions filled, there's only so much we can do.

Yeah. Okay, thank you.

um i i literally could say this after every presentation you give but you know seeing just you know the the examples of of the different programs and services you talked about today just always it it just kind of reinforces this idea that so much of park's work is about social connection and that that's just like a it's a you know a theme that runs through everything and i just really personally appreciate that and i know that like you all prioritize that as kind of one of several north stars but it's certainly something that like we intend to cultivate and especially these days it's just really nice to see people out enjoying together and you know looking through all these events in june and july that you know we have placed in front of us right now um there's something literally for everyone and all communities and all ages. And it's just really nice and speaks to kind of the strength of the community that you're helping to maintain and foster. So just thank you again. Thank everyone again for all the work you do. I could say it every week, but I'll just say it now. So thanks.

Oh, yeah, just to remind me of something, I'm listening to a podcast now on Robert Caro and his book, The Power Broker. about the park system in New York. And just to say, there are other ways it could be done that are not as good and not as inclusive. So again, just to back up what everybody else says, it's excellent work. And it is something for everybody and something all the time. And I think the worst problem I usually have with the park system is that I've got three kids and they want to go to three different things. Sometimes four at the same time. So we really do appreciate it. I think you guys do a great job. So I appreciate it.

Thank you. We can all learn things from Robert Moses. Some of those things will be good. Some of those things maybe less so. Yes.

Excellent presentation. Thank you.

Well, great. Thank you so much again. And we're going to take a two-minute break and start with our next item, the Parks Department budget adjustment. Thank you. Good morning and welcome back. We're on item number five, the Parks Department budget adjustment, where staff is recommending approval of the request for budget adjustments for fiscal year 25 and fiscal year 27 for the Department of Parks. And this morning we have Kate Bentley presenting this item. Welcome.

Thank you. Good morning. For the record, Kate Bentley, budget manager for Montgomery Parks. I'm here today requesting your approval for budget adjustment for our department. In prior years, we have come before you at this time to request approval to use unspent personnel funds within our department. However, earlier in FY26, we knew our high lapse would limit our ability to fill positions and reduce or eliminate year-end savings. Now, as we approach the end of the fiscal year, we've seen the retroactive pay impacts of the finalized McGeough wage agreement. And we are requesting approval to use remaining compensation marker and debt service funds to cover personnel overages. We also request permission to apply any remaining balance to contractual and inflationary costs that were not funded in our FY27 budget request. As Director Figueredo noted, none of our requested increases for contractual costs, inflation, or utilities were approved. We've prioritized the most essential obligations in an effort to minimize the impacts on staff and the residents who rely on our services. However, because we cannot prepay utilities, and year-end funds are still very limited, our ability to absorb these costs is still quite constrained. I'll briefly go through a summary of our requests, and our memo provides further detail. Our first request is to reallocate $1,877,040 from non-departmental compensation markers to divisional personnel budgets. This request includes three separate compensation marker transfers. The first transfer moves $196,000 $608 from the reclassification marker to cover actual FY26 costs. Because specific position reclassifications are not known during budget development, these funds are initially budgeted in a non-departmental account and later transferred to the divisions where the costs actually occur. The second transfer reallocates $1,666,475 from the pay adjustment compensation marker. Earlier this fiscal year, part of this marker was distributed to cover pay increases for nonrepresented staff approved in September. Now that the FY26 McGeough agreement has been finalized and retroactive pay has been processed, the department is requesting that the remaining funds be transferred to divisional budgets to cover those costs. The third transfer moves 19,000.

So this one, you didn't need them anymore for the pay adjustments. That was what left over.

Correct. We've seen all of the pay adjustments hit our divisional budgets now, now that the McGeo retro pay has gone through. Okay. The third transfer moves 19,000. $957 from the reserve compensation marker for seasonal staff benefits to the appropriate divisions based on, again, actual FY26 costs. Again, here, because we don't know during the budget development which seasonals will elect benefits, these funds are initially budgeted in a non-departmental account using eligibility and historical trends. And then we later transfer those to the divisions where the costs occurred. Our next request is to transfer $1 million from two non-departmental accounts to the Risk Management Internal Service Fund. When the FY27 proposed park fund budget was presented to the board in November, staff noted that the requested $812,100 would not fully meet the fund's needs. At the time, the plan was to rely on a portion of the fund balance while the department reviewed the factors driving these costs. Now that the county council has approved the FY27 risk management request, this transfer of $1 million is intended to strengthen the fund balance and help reduce the need for another significant increase in the park fund contribution for FY28. The first transfer moves $397,000 from remaining compensation marker for staff pay adjustments and non-departmental to the risk management internal service fund. The second transfer moves $603,000 from debt service funding in non-departmental to the risk management internal service fund. And finally, we're requesting $328,000 transfer from the remaining unused debt service funds to support services to cover critical contracts and other high-priority operational and staff-related needs in FY27. This includes $20,000 for MCGO staff uniforms, $18,000 for MIGTO safety shoes, $130,000 for gasoline and diesel fuel contracts, and $160,000 for contractual increases not funded in FY27, including required staff interpretation services under Title I, translation and interpretation for public events, portable toilets, software licenses and agreements, such as the Active Montgomery contract, trash removal, and equipment and maintenance contracts. That's the last of the FY26 transfers. However, we have a minor budget transfer for our FY27 adopted budget. This request is for a transfer of $179,906 from the Southern Parks Division to the Director's Office Division. This transfer aligns our FY27 budget with a minor reorganization that was made operationally earlier this year. The total of the FY26 transfers is $3,205,040. The total of the FY27 transfer is $179,906. At this time, the planning board's approval of these transfers is requested, unless you have any questions for me.

Thank you, Ms. Bentley, for your presentation. I'm in support of making these adjustments as requested to fund costs in fiscal year 26 and to fund costs in fiscal year 27.

Thank you.

Thanks for walking us through this. I just have a question about the third transfer for FY26 to sort of try to true up the contracts and utilities from the approved FY27 budget. Does this get us to the sort of full replacement of the cut, or are we still a little bit short?

We're still short, and unfortunately, again, because we can't prepay utilities. Those are paid based on monthly bills. We have to do as much as we can, but we won't be able to meet the entire need. We anticipate seeing a lot of those impacts next spring when we start to run out of funding, especially for the supplies and for the fuel contracts.

Okay. Okay. Thanks. Any other comments? Seeing none, is there... A motion to approve the request for budget adjustments for fiscal year 26 and fiscal year 27 for the Department of Parks. Yeah, I'll move to approve the budget adjustments for FY26 and 27.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. The ayes have it. Thank you so much. Thank you. And thanks for the Parks Department for all their hard work and especially... We hate to have to go through this, but it's a tough budget year. But we thank you for all your hard work. Thank you. So we're going to take a two-minute break and then start with our next item, which is the Planning Board Annual Briefing on Updates of the Montgomery County Burial Sites Inventory, where staff is recommending that we approve the revisions to the inventory. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. We're on item number six, the Planning Board Annual Briefing on Updates to the Montgomery County Burial Sites Inventory, where staff is recommending that the board approve revisions to the inventory. This morning, we have Brian Crane and Rebecca Ballo presenting this item. Welcome.

Good morning. My name is Brian Crane. I'm the Cultural Resources Planner with the Historic Preservation Division. And I'm here to present our annual update on the program. is that the board adopt the revisions to the inventory that we will discuss this morning. And then after that, we will go through a brief presentation about other burial sites inventory program activities during this past year, some of which you have actually already heard, but we won't go through all those. So again, as background, Our guidelines state that we will update the inventory each year. Well, as we go, when new information becomes available and that additions, revisions, and exclusions, deletions will be presented to the planning board annually at a briefing. And that has been generally the last meeting of May for every year since 2019. There are two ordinances that create and implement the inventory. Chapter 33A establishes the inventory and provides a definition. And it's anywhere in the county where human remains are interred. And it does not include sprinkling of ashes. County Code Chapter 50.4 was amended in 2017 that requires that cemeteries be indicated on preliminary plan applications and that the locations and boundaries of the burial sites be established by planning board guidelines and that they be established in such a way as to preserve the cemetery for future generations. So the existing inventory, including the updates this morning, includes 347 total burial sites. 261 of those are known locations. That is, those are places where there is physical evidence of the cemetery or where the historical evidence is precise enough that we can put a location on a map with high confidence. In other words, there are places where there are no longer markers on the surface, but that cemetery has been shown in a plat. And it's boundaries drawn in by surveying engineers. We have 86 that we consider approximate. Those are places where there is historical evidence of a cemetery, but no physical evidence survives that we're able to see. And the historical record isn't precise enough to say exactly where it is, but we have enough information that we can put on a map about where it is. There are additional locations that are on my working list every year. There's about, I don't know, two dozen of those. These come up in deed reservations when a family sold the farm out of the family, and it had a burial site. They sometimes retained ownership and referenced this in a deed. Sometimes they show up in plots. Sometimes they show up in oral histories or other historical summaries of the county. And so we're continually looking into those and updating the inventory as warranted. So the updates this year, there are six changes. There are five new records that we are proposing to add. Those are based on new information, new historical research along the lines of what I just described. And then there's one very slight change. It's the Martin Cemetery in Rockville. We already had it in the inventory. Turns out it was mapped. ever so slightly wrong, I mean, by less than 100 feet. But since there's an actual real property parcel designated as a cemetery in Estat, we do feel like our record and that record should match. So that's what that proposal is.

And here they are.

Here are the six. They're from throughout the county. And here is the same information as a table, the Martin Cemetery, Nathaniel and Elizabeth Magruder Cemetery, the Baldinar Family Cemetery, the Simpson Family, Blumash, Shreve Family Cemetery, and Duval Family Cemetery, Robinson's Range. I call it Duval Family Richardson's Range because there's actually multiple Duval Family Cemeteries that sometimes happens, that families that had family cemeteries sometimes had multiple. So that's just to try to avoid some confusion. So the first of these, this is the cemetery that we're just moving slightly. The Martin Cemetery was included in the original inventory adopted by the board in 2019 in a location that's close to but does not align with the real property parcel associated with the cemetery as shown in GIS data provided by the State Department. of assessment and taxation. The revised location aligns with SDAT and matches the location shown in a 1980 plot. So we're confident about this location. Actually, the adjoining neighbor has already fenced this off. So since they don't own it, they fenced it off. And now we want the inventory to reflect all of that. The Nathaniel and Elizabeth Magruder Cemetery includes the burial sites of Nathaniel and Elizabeth Offutt Magruder. It is unknown if there are other interments. The cemetery is mentioned as a reservation with detailed meets and bounds in two deeds. And it is also shown in a plat recorded in 1948. And so you see at the left-hand side of the screen the 1948 plat. And then there's a rectangle that indicates a cemetery. I've circled it in red. And georeferencing that in our GIS system, you get the location that is shown at right. I should indicate for actually for this one and the preceding Martin Cemetery, we don't have complete owner information for either of the parcels that contain these cemeteries. So they may meet the newly defined definition of an abandoned cemetery established this past session in state law. I'll get to that a little bit later in our presentation. But I did want to note. that there are some cemeteries in our inventory where we don't actually, we can't say who the owner is for certain. And these are cases where essentially the family reserved the ownership of the deed perhaps 100 or 150 years ago, and the information was never kept current. So the legal owner would be the descendant, but no one knows for certain who they are. So just to hold that in the back of your mind. The edition of the Waldenaar Family Cemetery is based on its mention in Episcopal church records, describing the burial of Elizabeth Waldenaar at the family home Westover in 1876. Essentially, I was doing research on our historic context, reading through the ecclesiastical records at Grace Episcopal Church for all of the burials that the clergy referenced. But it wasn't just burials at Grace Episcopal Church in Silver Spring. It was all of the burials that the clergy conducted anywhere in the county. And they actually conducted quite a few outside of Grace Episcopal Church. And this was one of them. And we didn't know about this one. And it turns out it's actually depicted in the 1956 USGS topographic map. It's associated with the Westover House, which is a house in our master plan for historic preservation. That house is still standing, but no evidence of the cemetery remains. It's quite close to a county right of way for the street. And so that's where we've it's approximate location. I was actually going to ask about, It looks like the street runs right over it, but we're talking it's potentially approximate of where it is. That's approximate. We don't know for certain where it is. I mean, it could be in the adjoining yards, but we put it in the right of way. There are quite a few cemeteries that have ended up this way, in one way or another.

With the, just a curiosity question, with the historical document research and things like that, is there any access to any of the materials from the construction of these roads? I'm not sure there would be for, like, indications that... There could be.

We haven't looked those up. We do look those up in cases where... there is a state right-of-way and a state highway project. So for example, the Mount Zion cemetery ongoing right now, the state has improvements for Georgia Avenue just south of the Beltway. We did ask the state to look into their highway plans for that. That has come up a number of times. We haven't done it here.

I would be shocked if it was, but I'm just curious for something of that size.

It's possible generally not. But every once in a while. Actually, there's another case. I think it's the Bus Rapid Transit for, I think it might be Columbia Pike. And the highway plans there did show the cemetery in the clover leaf. the new Cloverleaf for the highway. That was actually an update from last year. Again, that was already in our inventory, but it was mismapped. And the highway engineering plan showed its exact location. And that corresponded, actually, with meets and bounds in a family deed reservation. So we were able to move that to where correctly is. So it comes up, but it's not common.

Yeah, and I wouldn't even imagine. But that was interesting. Thank you.

So if they show it on the highway plan, that means that they knew that it was a cemetery there and they built the road on top of it?

Well, one would hope that they elected to move the graves. Those records are extremely poor. And archaeologically, we know that essentially pretty much any time that archaeologists go back to a cemetery site that has purportedly been moved, almost never do they get all of everybody. There are almost always additional graves or grave remains that are left behind. For that reason, we have always included the original locations of cemeteries purportedly moved in our inventory because of the very high likelihood that there are still graves there. Also because the definition of a burial site in the county law says a place where human remains were interred past tense. So the most literal reading of the statute is a historical location where there was a burial. And that is what we have endeavored to do as completely as we can. The Simpson family Blue Mash Cemetery was located within the Blue Mash or Blue Marsh African-American community, also sometimes called Jackson City, that existed as early as the 1820s but dispersed following a fire in the 1930s. The cemetery is specifically mentioned in a reservation to deeds dating to 1916 and 1946. The deeds do not give the exact location of the cemetery, but do specify the 25 acres within which the cemetery existed. Archaeological survey conducted in the area in the 1990s discovered a displaced 1854 grave marker in the general vicinity of the cemetery. The decedent is identified only by initials, and the current whereabouts of this marker are unknown. So what you see on this slide are on the boundaries of the properties that I found in deeds, including the Simpson family, the 25-acre parcel that the Simpson family sold at the beginning of the early in the 20th century that reserves the burial site. Its approximate location, it's on the Blue Match golf course now, is based on, you see at right, there is an early USGS map that indicates where the house was. the cemetery was probably somewhere within a few hundred feet of that house. So that's where its approximate location is indicated. Somewhere on the grounds of the Blue Marsh Golf Course or in an adjacent utility right-of-way, we don't know for certain.

Can I ask you a question here? In general, and I do not know if this is, I guess you can answer now, and if you know about past, if someone wants to use their property property for burial? What is the process?

RICHARD SCHMALENSEE, JR.: Oh, currently?

currently and before, because you say it was on the deed, but it was not completely. So I don't know what, can anybody decide that, OK, I'm going to be buried in my own property right now?

I think now that falls under conditional use and zoning laws that didn't exist in the 18th or 19th centuries.

This is Rebecca Bala for the record. That's correct. At the time that these historical family burial grounds existed, people could. People could just bury their family members on their own property. And there were not the same laws that we have today about health, sanitation, protecting the septic fields, things of that nature. My understanding is that if you were going to bury someone on your property currently, there's a designation to have your property as an active current burial sites. And there are requirements through the health department, other zoning requirements, other requirements through the Department of Permitting Services, perhaps, but definitely health requirements and zoning requirements. My understanding is that people cannot just decide to bury have their remains buried or the remains of their family members just buried in their backyard.

I don't think DPS has a permit for burial site. I don't remember when I was a director, so I don't know.

I really think it's a health services issue.

Yeah, probably it's another process. But you say that there are deeds, because even that specifically on a property, it was a deed that was recorded that this is a cemetery, is it still a requirement? I think that's a good idea. I don't know if it's not.

I don't believe so. It's important to understand that most of these family burial grounds began between 1 and 200 years ago. Actually, most of the burial sites that we have in the inventory, I believe I said at the beginning, 347, Almost 200 of those are old family burial grounds. And many of those date from early in the county's history. I mean, think about it. And we're looking into this as part of our context. Most people died at home in the 18th and 19th centuries. And it was quite... a natural thing to be buried somewhere near the house where that person died. Also, at the time, in the 18th century especially, there were only a handful of churchyards in the county. I mean, like five or six or something like that. Many people chose home burial. And that tradition continued even well into the 19th century when the number of churches and church burial yards proliferate. We've got about 100 of those in the county. People still chose to bury their loved ones at home. What happens with these deeds is when the family decides to sell the farm out of the family. And they want to make sure that they retain access to the old family burial ground and that it isn't used for something else. That's when those reservations occur. Very, very occasionally, they have precise meets and bounds for a boundary of the cemetery. Far more commonly, it's just somewhere in this 100 acres that we're selling, there is a graveyard. At the time, no one thought it was necessary to specify, because at the time, it was obvious. Obviously, it's not any longer, but they weren't thinking about that at the time.

So is it allowed now?

I mean, it depends on complying with, as Rebecca said, state health laws and our own zoning.

It should not be assumed that because there is a deeded cemetery that a right still exists for the property owner or the descendants to use it as an active burial ground.

If someone, oh, I apologize. I was following up on that. If someone today did want to pursue you know, burial on their property, would you all, would your team automatically become aware of that so it could be included in this? Or is that additional work would need to be done for you to become aware of it?

Not necessarily. I mean, if there was a change of a conditional use, something that would come before the planning department, we would learn about it that way. And there are a handful of new cemeteries that are occasionally proposed in the county, and we learn about those that way. There are, I believe, long existing family burial grounds that are still in use, I think.

There surely certainly are. if someone were to privately get the permissions that they need on their property, like there is no provision for the health department necessarily to inform our office that they've issued a permit or permissions for people to start burials on their own property. So no, that mechanism doesn't exist. Really, the only mechanism we have right now is if they need an entitlement through the planning board or they need a conditional use or something from the hearing examiner because we're involved in that process.

But don't you think you should create that mechanism?

Well, again, I think that's a much broader question. I have no idea how prevalent that even is. We don't know.

I think it's relatively uncommon. We have reached out to other agencies to coordinate about information and have not always. I mean, I've reached out, for example, to Montgomery County Police, who sometimes get reports of human remains found that people encounter and report to the police in the chance that it may be evidence of a crime. And I have asked that they let us know, because there is also the chance that instead of being evidence of a crime, it could be evidence of an historical burial ground. They haven't got back to us on that.

So why don't we continue? I know there's going to be some more interesting questions. Thank you.

Thank you. So the Shreve Family Cemetery. The Shreve Family Cemetery is on land purchased by the Shreve family in 1826 and may include the grave of Samuel Shreve, who died in 1861. It is not known who else may be buried there, but graves could include other family members as well as those the Shreves held in slavery. The cemetery is mentioned in a 1905 reservation in a deed transferring the land from the executor of Anne O'Hare to Catherine Tolson. Members of the public contacted Montgomery Planning in 2024 about the possible location of the family cemetery in the vicinity of the O'Hare house. including former residents of the O'Hare House itself from circa 1980, who remember the location of the cemetery. Montgomery planning provided the former resident with 1951 aerial imagery, and the former resident indicated a group of trees north of the house that corresponded to his memory of where the cemetery had been located. Those trees are in the general vicinity of the present-day intersection of Silo Way and Orange Street. And so you see at left is the aerial photograph with the clump of trees that the resident remembered, and at right where that is today. The last one, I think. The Duval family Richardson's Range Cemetery was identified by staff during review of a nearby forest conservation plans. That did not include the cemetery, we believe. The cemetery is not believed to be within any of those project areas. The first historical reference to the cemetery is a reservation in a deed transferring the farm from Jackson to Amanda Duvall to John H. Duvall in 1884, also reserving one quarter of an acre used as a family burial ground in Feasible. The deed reservation recurs in deeds executed in 1903, 1911, 17, and 1952. Jackson Duval acquired the property from John and Alcinda Duval in 1864. That deed does not mention a cemetery, nor does it cite a preceding deed. There is no information available about who may have been buried at the site. The Duval family members who sold the farm were still living at the time of the sale. Perhaps the graveyard included children, earlier Duval generations, or possibly people enslaved by the Duvals. And so our approximate location here is based on the location of the farmstead. This follows patterns that we have established elsewhere. There are about 100 locations in the county where we know for certain where the family burial site was and for certain where the family house was. And we've looked at how those are related to each other. excuse me, I learned from that that the burial ground is usually within a few hundred feet of the house and on perhaps a small rise, a little bit upslope on the terrace edge, within the farmstead itself, the toft, if you will, and not in the fields. And so we look at aerial photographs from late in the time when this was still farmland to see where the most likely location is. And again, that corresponds roughly to a canopy right away, and that's where we've And that's where we've indicated it. This whole area now has been developed as suburban housing. So those are all the updates for this year. Now I want to go through the other program activities we have had in the last year, the most significant of which is developing the burial site's historic context. Now we briefed you all about this a few months ago, about the development of the historic context and an historic context survey that our consultant, the Ottery Group, had done for us. A part of that work, we identified a number of historic themes that are associated with cemeteries in the county. Themes are essentially broad historical patterns or processes, phenomena that are of interest to historians. And we picked those. This is not an exhaustive list necessarily, but these are ones that we think are particularly important for the county and that involve burial sites. We also classified all the cemeteries that are in our inventory now, family sites, religious sites, community burial sites. Those are sometimes places that started out as either a churchyard or a family burial ground and just became larger and larger. Like with the family burial ground, it might have started as a nuclear family. Then it was an extended family. Then it became that whole sort of, township, well, that area of the county is sort of a larger, looser kinship network and ultimately essentially became a community burial ground. We have enslaved persons burial grounds. We have two pet cemeteries, one potter's field, a place where the indigent poor were buried. And then we have 20th and 21st century large commercial perpetual care cemetery sites. are the survey that Autry did for us. Essentially, we gave them a sample of 19 sites to explore, to explore our themes, to explore our classification, and to get an idea from that study of additional directions in which to elaborate our historic context. So you see in this slide a couple of examples that we looked at as part of that. And you can see some important and interesting differences in how these places are designed. So at left is a plan view of the what we've called the Hill Farm Cemetery. This is an antebellum graveyard on land that had belonged to George Peter and includes the graves of people explicitly designated and are described as quarry workers, people who were working in a quarry owned by Peter and had been born in Ireland. Elsewhere in the cemetery, there was and then the very elaborately carved monument to a person that George Peter held in slavery. So this was very intimately associated with George Peter. It was on his land. People who worked for him or were enslaved by him. And you can see the layout is a little bit irregular. At right, you see the burial grounds. Upper right is the Sandy Spring Friends Meeting House. And lower right is St. Rose of Lima Catholic Burial Ground, another antebellum burial ground. Sandy Spring Friends began in the 18th century, although the first graves There were no gravestones until probably the 1820s. So you see some really marked differences in how these places are laid out. In Sandy Spring, some really fairly neat rows of very modest markers. Again, it seems that the Friends didn't have markers at all for the first 75 years of the cemetery's use. This was in keeping with the ideas of equality and humility that were a part of Quakerism. in St. Mary's, you see a lot more verticality to the burial ground. There are more obelisks. There are more elaborate, larger and more elaborate monuments. We also find those in other Catholic cemeteries in the county as well as Episcopal Church cemeteries. So as part of our context, we are looking at how the design, the layout and the relationship between that the graves and the church or the graves in the house relate to its context as part of this larger context report that we are writing now. So where we're going now, we are developing that historic context report. So I'm taking those historical themes that I showed you earlier and the particular classification of cemeteries and mixing those two together and looking at the design characteristics, the location characteristics, and other attributes of these places in order to understand what makes them interesting, what makes them different from each other, and understand what may make one or another cemetery particularly interesting or significant and perhaps worthy of preservation, and what about it we might want to preserve. So that's our context that I'm working on right now. We plan to present that to county council sometime this summer. I think we're still waiting on a date. Don't have that yet. And then the next step is to work on amending, working on the first thematic countywide amendment to the master plan for historic preservation for cemeteries, beginning with essentially a scope of work for this that we're working on this summer, and then begin the work for that amendment, an effort that we anticipate will require several years. Because it will go, of course, to the HPC. It will come before you all and ultimately before county council with a lot of coordination with the public throughout all of those steps. So it's quite a process. So a low-hanging fruit, if you will, the first things we would be looking at as part of such an amendment would include looking at cemeteries that already have some clear identifiable relationship to properties already listed on the master plan. So I showed you already a map of the Hill Farm Cemetery. You see it here on the larger map. We know that there were quarry workers buried there, as well as people associated with George Peter. George Peter and his other Peter family cousins owned quarries along the Potomac River, the Seneca Query is already a master plan historic site. There is a Seneca historical district. So there are already a number of thematically related master plan or national register sites and districts in this area. And we're going to look at whether the Hill Farm cemeteries should be added to the master plan in some fashion for its association with these other properties. We've also got a handful of cemetery sites that are on the locational atlas, including this one, the Edwards Ferry or Hickman Cemetery, that is itself by itself, a locational Atlas site. And its environmental setting is vast. I mean, the cemetery is far, far, far smaller than what is shown here. That clearly is not appropriate. It's actually quite an interesting site. cemetery. You see at the right, there is a fieldstone, a very simple fieldstone marker, but it has carving on it, including the date 1766. That makes it the second oldest marked cemetery in the county. The oldest is in Rockville Cemetery. It dates to 1752. We don't have any others until the 1780s. So it's very unusual in its early date, and also because it's this marked Fieldstone. So an early date. This is out towards the northwest corner of the county. And it's an unusual example of an 18th century family burial ground. Very few of these places survive. It's on property that's owned and administered by the National Park Service. So it is protected, though it's in a utility right-of-way. And hikers do go there. And that stone, I've seen it sort of pushed over. So there is some, I mean, because they're just fieldstone markers, people may not realize what they are and may move those markers. So there is some. I mean, the Park Service is aware of the site, but we would like to increase its protections. So other program activities. So we have a lot of work going on with section 106 review, for example. The managed lanes project is sort of on hiatus now, but we still get updates from the state about that one, because it relates to the Morningstar Tabernacle burial site in Cabin John. But we've also mentioned the work along Georgia Avenue for improvements to Georgia Avenue. The state is actively doing investigations on the Mount Zion Methodist Episcopal Church burial ground. Their very preliminary results suggest that that burial ground is substantially larger than anyone expected. They're still working on their investigations. They will be sending us a technical report to review as part of our role as a consulting party in that section 106 process. So that's still going on. We get regular mandatory referrals for projects involving MCDOT. We've also got currently one for the Dickerson Power Plant. So those are fairly regular occurrences. We have quite a few going on for a subdivision and development review. There is the Waters Family Poplar Grove Cemetery. That preliminary plan will be coming before you all, I believe, this summer. There is one involving the Washington Episcopal Day School. I think that is also scheduled to come before you all this summer. And there's a Korean church along Ashton Road. Those all are scheduled, I believe, to come before, you all this summer. So those are active ones. And then we've got some new ones cropping up, one at Dickerson Power Plant and then another along Jerusalem Church Road. So those are a fairly active part of our work. And then there's agency consultation. We sometimes get contacted by other county agencies or by the Maryland Historical Trust or other agencies inquiring about our programs. if we have recommendations for how they may adjust theirs. Historic preservation is a bit of a patchwork quilt in Maryland in terms of the local level. There is considerable variation from one county to another. And so we periodically are asked about our programs so that municipalities, counties and municipalities considering new programs can have some examples to pattern from. In recent years, I've been in contact with the city of Frederick, Rockville. And this past year, it was St. Mary's City and St. Mary's, Maryland. So we were also asked to comment on a couple of bills related to cemeteries that were before the Maryland Assembly this year. There were two of them. They kind of got combined into a single one. That passed and was signed into law. SB 233, abandoned cemeteries. And the thing that's sort of the part of that law I think arguably concerns the commission most directly is the provisions that allow for public agencies to acquire abandoned cemetery sites. And there are some instances in Montgomery County. There are about a half a dozen burial sites that, for one reason or another, meet that requirement. And there are two that are shown here. The one at left is Ricketts Family Cemetery. And it is entirely surrounded by Millbrook Hills Park. And so it's surrounded entirely by our parkland. So I don't know how Parks feels about this necessarily, but neither they nor we have ever been able to identify a current owner for this. It's marked out as a separate real property parcel in Estat. We have mapped it. We know exactly where it is. And it's entirely surrounded by our land. So that might make a fairly obvious candidate for such an acquisition, since we already own everything around it.

What would happen if the state acquires the cemetery?

Well, there's a process for public notice. And a nonprofit could step forward to an agency can acquire this for purposes of transferring ownership to a nonprofit or to a descendant's group. if one were to identify itself. Again, in this place, we've never been able to identify who the descendants may be. I mean, this is a family burial ground that's probably something on the order of 150 plus years old. So we just don't know.

But it's plotted. A cemetery, but there's no historical record as to- Correct.

I mean, the ownership information is very incomplete. We have no way of contacting an actual active owner.

Just for a point of jest, I find the words abandoned cemeteries to be somewhat oxymoronic because you abandon an unidentified body or an unoccupied house, but cemeteries are occupied by-

Well, fair point. It is the term used in the new state law. So I think their reasoning was to look at the definition of abandoned property in state law and to use that understanding of what constitutes abandoned property that is no longer identifiable or active owner. And so they used that concept, that legal concept, and applied it to cemetery sites. At right, we have the Awkard Family Cemetery. Again, this is a very small family burial site. It's in Big Woods. And the family reserved this in a reservation, I think in the 1880s. And now it sort of became an escaped parcel. It's not a recorded parcel. It's just sort of an odd bump out from county right of way. So technically, actually, Montgomery County technically owns this because they own the right of way. But it's also arguably an abandoned cemetery for purposes of the act. We regularly work on field visits. I forgot to write on my slide. I have it in the staff report how many I got to this year. I think it was like 40 or 50 cemeteries. I've been really trying to get to as many as I can. And I've gotten to, I think it's like about 2 thirds of them at this point. I do have as a goal before I retire to try to get to all of them if possible. That may or may not be possible. I mean, not every property owner is willing to let me come on their property. And the reason for this is, especially in working on the context, it really helps me to see these places and to understand how they lie on the ground, how they relate to the surrounding landscape. And they're interesting things that I learn every time. At left is the Quarry family burial ground. Again, this is one of those very rare 18th century markers. This one dates to 1788. And I'm also sort of showing off some specialized photographic techniques. So you see sort of that right, that's two images of the same grave marker, right? At the right is just a standard photograph. And you can make out the writing, but it's really hard to read. I mean, it's very difficult sometimes to take a photograph of a marker, especially older markers, that allow a viewer to really appreciate what the inscription is. So what I did was a process called photogrammetry. So you take a number of overlapping digital images. Software turns this into a 3D model. And then that 3D model can be artificially computationally lit in a number of different ways that pull out that inscription. So what you're seeing at far left is what's called ambient occlusion. It's a way of enhancing an image. Essentially, it's a technique that was developed by 3D animators for games and animated movies. It's a way of where there are deep cuts or sharp angles that sort of enhance the shadows there so that they stand out more. It's just a 3D artist technique. And so I've applied that. And you see here, it works really, really well. I mean, the inscription comes out beautifully as well as a hand-done illustration would do. At right is Highestown United Methodist Church. And again, I'm interested in how the markers in these places relate to the simple frame churches that are common in our county. and to understand how those choices are made.

I'm just curious. For old markers, like in the late 1700s, like the one we were just looking at, Are there typical stones that would be used? Obviously, they would probably just use stone that was on the property.

That's a great question. Yeah, that's right. So typically, because transportation systems were very limited at the time, it was before the Sino Canal, before railroads. It was just the river stream. Some of our streams were more navigable than they are now. You know, siltation and then erosion have really changed some of that. But mostly a very limited network of dirt roads or rolling roads, log roads. So it was not easy to transport stone. So the stones, we believe, tend to be local. So I think this is a local chester gneiss, a local Montgomery County granite. You saw the marker from the Hickam Family Cemetery. It was essentially a field stone. So they found a large stone there right near the grave, presumably, and carved it. We do see marble fairly early on. Our best guess is that it's probably coming from Baltimore County, the Cockeysville marbles. And then later, once the railroads start Well, I'll start first with the Sino Canal. That's when the Seneca quarries are developed on the antebellum era. This beautiful, very rich, reddish-brown sandstone, easily carved when first quarried, and that hardens on exposure to air. It was used for the Smithsonian Castle and a number of other prominent DC landmarks and makes beautiful grave markers. They're quite common from the 1840s and 50s, and that happens. after the C&O Canal and after those queries are developed. And then finally, after the 1870s, 1880s, when the railroad network is established in Montgomery County, that's when you start to get really imported granites from Vermont, for example, these jet black granites that are not from Maryland. Also part of the historic context. You're getting a little bit of preview. That's why we look into these, because we are interested in what materials people used and why. We also think a lot of wood markers were used, which would not have survived. I think I know of two wooden markers that have survived. I think the 20th century, like early 20th century, only two out of all of our graveyards that I know of. Most of those are just, I mean, they just fall apart.

I was actually going to – that was the question I was going to ask. We know with stone markers, we're getting a – there's a survivorship bias. Yes, absolutely. Not a term, but it's based on the material used. I don't know. I just think it's interesting to think about this in a historical context is I would imagine that when you see the imported or the more – what would have been termed at the time luxury items – probably tracks very well to the development of an interconnected commerce system within the United States. That's the development. Being able to transport that is not something possible in the 1760s.

And the development of catalogs. You could order a marker from Sears and other late 19th century catalogs. That sort of democratized, actually, access and made it relatively affordable because those merchants were able to mass market their materials and keep the costs modest. On public outreach, there are a number of examples here. A presentation I gave to a local chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution. We are in the 250th year. And I gave a presentation to them about all of the graveyards that we know about that have Revolutionary War era veterans buried there. Kind of along a similar note, lower left, you see a Liberty Tree planting. This is several chapters of the DAR got together just a few weeks ago. And in coordination with Ash Memorial Cemetery, planted a Liberty Tree there and celebrated the work of an Eagle Scout. And you see local scouts taking part. So we had scouts, we had local DAR and SAR members, as well as descendants from the Ash Memorial community all there. It was a lovely day. Got St. John's only in the middle. They had asked me to come out and give a presentation about the burial sites program as a whole. And they're doing a lot of research on their own about their church's history. And because there are close associations with the early church, their early church, and enslavement in Montgomery County, they're interested in understanding what those relationships are. And so they had questions for me about where the people that their early founders may have held in slavery, where may they be buried? So I talked to them about that. Then at left, excuse me, at right, there I am cleaning headstone. We did a cemetery cleaning workshop with a preservation company out at Mount Pleasant in Norbeck. It was a great day. People learning some really very simple gravestone conservation techniques. And then, as I mentioned, sites under investigation. Here's one. So William Offit wrote a book, a really detailed book, about the history of Chevy Chase. And he did a lot of oral history. And he mentioned a couple of cemeteries that just sort of escaped everybody's notice until I found them looking for something else. It always happens. And lo and behold, oh my gosh, he mentioned cemeteries that we didn't know about. One of them, he purports, was a burial ground where canal workers who had died of cholera were buried at the site of the original Friendship Schoolhouse. So I've been able to figure out where that is. And so that's on our list probably for next year. I have not been able to confirm that people were buried there, but I have been able to find the school. And for what it's worth, The National Park Service did this enormous historic properties study of, I mean, it's like 800 pages on the C&O Canal. And it goes into quite a bit of depth about the cholera epidemics of the 1830s and 40s. It was a massive problem. There were many canal workers who died at that time, and it created a little bit of a panic. Local communities did not want people who were sick from cholera or who had died of cholera to be brought into their towns, because they didn't know really what caused these diseases. So they wouldn't let people be buried. So there are records of rather irregular burial of people who had died of this, as well as records of particularly Catholic clergy pushing back. A lot of these canal workers were Irish. They were Catholic. So it is thought that there was a mass grave at St. Mary's in Barnesville because the Catholic priest there said, no, we are going to give these people proper burial. They're not going to be just, you know, put under a tree somewhere that's going to be sacred ground. So anyway, so that's another. I actually have an appointment to go out and meet the rector at St. Mary's. And some members of the community have been researching this to see where this may be. So that's what we've got. And just to go all the way back to the beginning, again, our six recommended adjustments to the inventory, five new sites, one moved site. And our recommendation, of course, is that you approve those, adopt those. And that's it, apart from any questions you may have.

Great, great presentation, Mr. Crane. I appreciate your passion for your work. Also, the work that your group, Ms. Ballewo and Ms. Crane and your team do for around burial sites and about historic places in general. And what really resonates with me in your work is that it signals to me that you're telling everyone that you matter, right? And that's really important, you know, that we as a planning department and what your work is, you matter and history is important. So thank you. But jumping ahead, we have one person here, Eileen McGuckian from the Coalition to Protect Maryland Burial Sites and Montgomery Preservation, Inc. to provide some public testimony. And welcome. We appreciate you coming this morning. Thank you. You have six minutes.

I wasn't going to use the entire time until I heard all the wonderful things that Brian was saying in addition to his report. So I have some additional comments. Yes, I guess I'm just going to start. Well, my name is Eileen McGuckian, and I'm here on behalf of Montgomery Preservation, which is the countywide preservation organization. And it's been my pleasure to reflect and comment on the occasion of these annual reviews from the very beginning. And you know that building on previous efforts, a decade ago, MPI orchestrated a mini-grant from Heritage Montgomery and about 100 volunteers to compile the inventory of all identified burial sites, which county law placed under your jurisdiction. I heard about Martin Cemetery, and I think I still have the bites I got going through the Prickers that day and doing it. I went with the researcher and was part of that. MPI, we remain concerned about these unique historic places, and again this year I'm here to bring you news and suggestions. So MPI, first of all, wants to say we appreciate the work of your staff who attend to cemeteries. You saw Brian Crane's professional and passion work today in his annual report. And you know that historian Jamie Ferguson continues to find partnerships and sources of support for sites that are owned by Montgomery Parks. And she'll love getting another one, a new one to work on. We're pleased to see the pattern of including cemetery sites in each updated master plan that is undertaken, no pun intended, by Montgomery Planning. And I'm particularly delighted to watch interest that is expressed by so many of you on the dais today. It's a real pleasure to know that there are people listening and wanting to go farther. So I'm happy to report success with cemetery legislation in recent Maryland General Assembly sessions. You heard a little bit about it from Brian. MPI has been teaming with advocates throughout Maryland for years to address specific issues, and it is really, again, gratifying to see legislators recognize problems that are faced by descendants who come in and talk to them. and give all the terrible and good stories and property owners to be able to convince these legislators to sponsor and co-sponsor bills and ultimately to earn unanimous votes in both the House and the Senate. So in 2025, Maryland law created a work group to begin detailed planning for a comprehensive inventory of all Maryland cemeteries. The goal is to unite lists that are kept by SHA, by Maryland Historical Trust, by the Office of Cemetery Oversight, genealogy societies, and all counties, Montgomery being a leader among them, into a usable database. That work group submitted recommendations on December 1st to the General Assembly. It includes the definition of abandonment to relate to what you were just talking about. It's basically unknown ownership. That's the big deal. But it has now in Maryland law, there is a real definition of abandonment. But the recommendations include the inventory format and specific steps needed to start it, and you can see a link to that report on MPI's website. Also that year, abandoned cemeteries, in addition to receiving a solid definition, they also received a dedicated fund. So there has been created an abandoned cemetery fund in the state of Maryland. And next year, we'll talk about putting some money into both the fund and the database. This year, we made progress with needed initiatives related to site identification, court process, and enabling positive outcomes. Our proposed bill, one was a process that we had several. a process to protect descendants' rights and give directions to the courts in case of sale or transfer of a cemetery or partial parts of a cemetery, plus a legal path for county and municipal governments to acquire an abandoned cemetery and convey it, as Brian said, to descendants or nonprofit who will maintain it. Those were combined unanimously the last day of the session, passed unanimously in the final hour of sine die, was signed by Governor Moore on May 12, and goes into effect on October 1. And I'm delighted to hear some examples of where we might start working on that even before administrations change at the county. I have a few updates on African-American sites and invitations for you. The future of Morning Star Cemetery and Moses Hall and Cabin John, ID number 106, continues to get brighter. If you haven't seen the documentary, I recommend that you check out the Friends of Moses Hall website. And the latest good news is that SHA deeded a final sliver of cemetery with burials, identified burials, back to the trustees recently. And a state bond bill initiative to fund design and engineering for repair and reconstruction needs was successful, thanks to District 16 legislators. I'm on the board of, that's not mine. Did I use six minutes? May I keep going a little more?

I have, all right, I'm sorry.

I even timed it at home.

All right, I got so caught up in what Brian and Rebecca were saying.

So I'm on the board of Morningstar. And in answer to, I think, of Mr. Hetrick's questions, we found SHA documents that they didn't know they had that showed the cemetery. We found documents from the funeral home, usually the one in Rockville, Snowden, who removed them. And so those documents do exist. But Morningstar is having a cleanup on Saturday, June 13. You're welcome to come and visit and help with the spring cleanup. Sandy Spring Ash Cemetery is doing well. Brian mentioned community cleanups and the ceremonies and so on, but they also received a state African-American fund grant to help many of its needs. Another success story is Pleasant View and Quince Orchard. That historic site with the church and Rosenwald School and rededication of that site is going to be on June 20th. We'll celebrate decades of strong effort by generations of the Green family. Now, I have some suggestions, which I've put into categories. Identification. Make sure that SDAP maps show all county cemeteries. Continue to do those, even where the ownership is unknown. And in fact, they should be added to as many maps and plans as possible so owners, researchers, developers, and communities have access to the information. Include all county burial sites in work that is conducted by you. And as an example, none of the context sites are in our incorporated municipalities. So jurisdiction is very much understood, but lack of inclusion could be a mistake. And I say that's true for Laytonsville, for Rockville, for the Oldest Stone, for Gaithersburg, for the cholera epidemic that St. Mary's and Rockville received burials for as well.

Ms. McKinney, could you... Maybe give your notes to staff. Take 30 more seconds. OK. I'll write it up better, and I will do that. And then give your notes to staff.

Include the cemeteries owned by Montgomery Parks as well. For protection, pay close attention to specific cemeteries that are in tenuous situations. One of them is Tobitown Cemetery, an example of neglect. It's a master plan site. It's owned by a public agency who was supposed to turn it over to a local HOA. Mount Zion Cemetery on Georgia Avenue, the number of burials estimated are about 164 so far. You can pursue demolition by neglect on behalf of cemeteries that are on the master plan as you do for other sites. review local protections for burial sites. MPI is prepared to help you look closely at the two laws that the county council passed in 2017 and to say what we can do in addition to that. And there is some county law that can be amended, and there's current state laws that can be added. added to it. We would like to invite you to host a public session with us, in addition to the ones you're doing to the county council and the SARs, to explain the historic context and the burial sites amendment to the master plan. Thank you. And then lastly, I just want to remind me of my challenge to you, and I think I'm going to add other people to that, to visit all the cemeteries on the inventory. Okay.

Thank you so much. I appreciate your presentation and coming out today.

So, Dewey, I have a comment, and I'd like to second all the great things you said about Mr. Crane, and when Mr. Crane gives a presentation, it's like we're in a master class, and I really appreciate the time and effort he puts into it, and he's outstanding. Thanks.

Thank you so much. Any other questions or comments? I support adding five new sites to the inventory based on new information and changing the location of one known site record based on historical research. So is there a motion to approve the revisions to the inventory as mentioned? I'll move to approve the revisions to the inventory as discussed.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. The ayes have it. 5-0. Thank you so much. Thank you for your presentation, Mr. Crane, and thank you, Ms. McGuckian, for coming. So we're going to take a two-minute break and then go to our next item, which is item number seven, the Great Seneca Plan Draft Design Guidelines, where staff is recommending approval of the design guidelines. Thank you. Good morning and welcome back. We're on item number seven, the Great Seneca Plan Draft Design Guidelines, where staff is recommending approval of the design guidelines. And this morning we have Mr. Louis Estrada presenting this item, but I believe we have some presentation beforehand or introduction.

Thank you, members of the Planning Board. For the record, Atul Sharma. I'm the Division Chief of the Design Placemaking Policy Team. We are here as a team today with Luis Estrada and our supervisor, Sandra Pereira. As a team, I think we are really excited to be here since this really marks the last step in the completion of the recommendations of the Great Seneca Plan. As the board might recall, the plan was approved in 2024. Following that, there was an overlay zone created for that plan area that did a number of specific things to incentivize more housing production, a greater variety of uses, provide options for more dense buildings. Following that, one of the recommendations in the master plan was to create this document. So the urban design guidelines are being presented here because they are required for the recommendations in the master plan. And the board, we are requesting the board's approval today. And just as a note, as As opposed to sector plans, the design guidelines are adopted and maintained by the planning board. So they do not go to county council for review. So this would be the last step in the adoption of the guidelines. So we're excited about that. And as you might have seen in the attachments, this is a very beautiful document. It's full of relevant information that we hope will be very useful for regulatory reviewers, our own staff, but also staff in other agencies, consultants and developers, and also the planning board as you all evaluate the approvals for projects within the plan area. The guidelines are really a compass and not a step-by-step directions. So they set a general framework and a vision for what type of development we want to see in the plan area, but they're not highly prescriptive. And Luis is one of our most experienced urban designers. He's done a great job at several master plans for the planning department over almost two decades. So you're seeing that wealth of experience that is shining through. And Sandra has done a tremendous amount of regulatory review, so we have been informed by that as well. And I'll turn to Sandra to talk a little bit about all the coordination that went into creating this document before we turn to Luis to walk us through the content.

Thank you, Atul. Good morning. It's a pleasure to be here today. I'm Sandra Pereira, Urban Design Supervisor with the Design, Placemaking, and Policy Division. And I'm very proud of the work that our team has produced and is bringing before you today. We started working on these guidelines last fall, shortly after the reorg. And this work is now representing a major accomplishment for our new team to have this completed. Special thanks to Luis Estrada for leading this important work. But also, as in any work that we do, we cannot do it alone. So I just want to highlight our collaboration with other divisions, both transportation planning Environment and Climate Division, East County Planning, and West County Planning, as well as the Parks Department. They all collaborated and provided feedback and input on this document. Also, the guidelines for the opportunity sites were shared and discussed with property owners who provided feedback that has been incorporated in the document that you're seeing today. We met with property owners for The Grove, Montgomery Medical, The Coverley Hall, Adventist Hospital, Promark Partners, and London Dairy. We met both with HOC as well as Dufif separately. And so I just want to thank everybody who provided input and feedback and made this work possible that you're seeing today. And without further ado, I will turn it over to Louise to give you an overview of the guidelines, of the design guidelines. Thank you very much.

And for the record, my name is Luis Estrada, and it's great to finally be here doing this. And I just wanted to echo Sandra's comments regarding all the acknowledgments that need to be given to all the staff members that were part of this collaborative effort that took a number of years to get us here. And in addition to all the team members that were available to us to provide feedback and input So what we did, I also want to give a shout out to our colleagues in the communications department and how helpful they were with us helping us push this document to the finish line. I'm sending a shout out to Dior Kane for all her work in getting this document through the finish line. And to start, this is the outline of what we're planning to do today. We will do a brief introduction to the design guidelines as a product, as we have been working on guidelines for a number of years in the department. We have developed a few different ways of approaching how we provide guidance for different areas within the county. We'll then go into a quick description of the documents organization. And then we'll go through how we're providing guidelines for the properties within the Life Sciences Center, We'll conclude the presentation with some remarks, and then we'll recommend that the guidelines be approved by the planning board. And our first point of conversation, we wanted to talk a little bit about the work that we have been doing with design guidance over the years in the department. These are three examples of how we have provided design guidance in the past. And the design guidance we provide varies depending on the area that we're working with. We have, for example, we have provided very specific guidance for areas that are already established urban areas. So for those areas, we usually have guidelines that include very detailed descriptions of how to improve existing conditions, because an urban structure in those places already exists. So the goal for those guidelines is to refine what's already in place. And then we have the guidelines that we have put together for areas that are sort of in the middle of the county that are emerging areas. We have an example of what we did for the Rock Spring, White Flint area. We adequately referred to them as parking lots of places because those are areas where where an urban structure doesn't exist today. And the goal of the guidelines for those locations is to figure out ways of implementing an urban structure as recommended by any applicable master plan. And those guidelines tend to be a bit higher level than the guidelines that we provide for places like Silver Spring or Bethesda, because maneuvering the master plan recommendations into position takes a fair amount of coordination. we try to sort of basically explain the recommendations on the plan and then let the regulatory process guide the decision making of where street recommendations land and what ultimately buildings are going to do in relation to all those implemented networks. And then, In recent times, we have actually endeavored into including design guidance within the body of the master plan. I mean, I have an example here of the Clarksburg Gateway sectoral plan, which included a pretty robust section on community design within the body of the document that included even suggestions for block layouts, other design of building facades, building type locations, and open space design. So they went a bit further than we typically do with master plan, but that's another way of addressing the issue in areas, for example, in the up county areas where there are larger properties with potential for significant amounts of redevelopment.

Usually a practice that we make a design guideline for every master plan or this is just new?

We have been working on the design guidelines program for at this point, it's over 16 years that we've been doing this. 16 years that we've been doing this? I mean with the first set of design guidelines that I was involved with was in 2010. And that was for the White Flint sector plan. And over the years, we have developed different ways of approaching different areas. We always try to provide guidance for every planning area. Depending on the type of area, we may have made the decision of creating a separate document or including guidance within the body of the plan.

Yeah. My only concern is that we are creating more guidelines, more coordination, more work for the development community. And I do not know if this is more help, or is it more restrictions? Are they required to follow this? And what if they find something that we they think it is better or works for them better. I don't know with the previous experiences that you have had if these guidelines work better or it's another document to coordinate with. I'm not trying to lower the work you have done. I truly appreciate. Please don't take it that way. I'm just thinking from the outside world, the first thing they hear, OK, one more document, one more things that we have to do, one more that we have to spend money for engineers or architect to follow and coordinate with.

And if I may respond to your question, Commissioner, Sir Robert Cronenberg, for the record. And we've been doing design guidelines for as long as I've been here, so well over 25 years. A lot of the design guidelines used to follow more of the urban downtown areas. And as we have grown and the areas have become more urban in nature, like White Flint, like Shady Grove, many of those there was a need to provide more context and a little bit more direction for the development community. Because otherwise, then we're arguing about little details that we could put together in a guideline for them to follow. What Mr. Estrada was mentioning, where we've started looking at whether some of the design guidance is in the master plans or whether it's a separate document, the benefit was always, if it's a separate document, It's not approved by the council, so it's approved by the board. And if we need to modify it or change it, which we've done in the past, we can do that. And there's a lot more flexibility that's being offered in that format. But in some cases, we have put that guidance in the master plans because it's really needed. And of course, we've never viewed it as another hurdle to go through, but more of guidance and reference points. And in some cases, their urban design guidelines, I think, They've started calling them community design guidelines, depending on the framework of that particular area and whether it's more suburban, urban in nature, or if it's a hybrid of the two. Other design guidelines that I know this board has seen that it really requires a lot of coordination with other agencies as well. is streetscape guidelines. So they're very urban in nature based on where they're installed, which is primarily in a lot of the downtowns. So hopefully that answers your question.

Yeah, I have no issues with that. The only thing that I think it is good is that I totally understand the intent of what you're trying to do. But I'm hoping that that intent is interpreted exactly the same way you want in the outside world with the developers. So maybe, I do not know, there are some surveys or some feedbacks that we could receive that if they support and they think this is useful, or do they feel that if this is an extra thing that they have to coordinate? And if they think it's the latter, how could we make it to be what you're talking about? That's my only concern.

Sure, and if I may just kind of respond to that as well. A lot of the information that goes into the guidelines that Luis and many of the others are working on are items that would come up during an application review. And so if we're priming that before the applications come in, then we're addressing a lot of the concerns because we are already hearing from the development community. And so by addressing those concerns early, we're providing the guidance so that when the application comes in, we're not debating those particular points. And it does move the project along a little bit better. OK, please.

So with that, we are moving into the guidelines for this particular area, the Great Seneca area. And even though there's a fair amount of development already in place in here, we're seeing this as an emerging area, again, because the structure of an urban place is still not in place. And the master plan recommends a number of connections and open spaces and additional development that will require a fair amount of coordination if applications were to come in through our doors. So we've tried to keep the guidelines at a higher level than we usually would do for places like Silver Spring or Bethesda. And what we intend in this case is to provide guidance for properties that are transitioning from suburban campus formats and into a more urban development type of development, and also to facilitate development review coordination. I mean, we're already seeing applications for this area. And then we've had the opportunity to coordinate with property owners with the contents that we're presenting to you today to ensure that there are no conflicts between what they're looking to do and what we're including within the document that we're sharing. So far, we have been able to be successful in doing that. And the purpose of the guidelines in general is to define how the buildings in the public realm connect to one another. That's, in general, what we look for in here to establish a good relationship between new development and the public realm. We also are looking to integrate new development with any transportation improvements that are recommended by the master plan. and also to connect all of those within a required public open space. We're looking to create complete communities. That has become a big priority from all of our recent master plans. And to do that, we need to sort of blend new and existing development to enhance quality of life and reduce impacts with surrounding neighborhoods and any existing buildings within the properties that will remain. And we also use the guidelines as a way to clarify master plan expectations. We try to include a multitude of images and diagrams to ensure that the vision of the master plan is clear but is presented in a way that is maneuverable so that it can be put into position through coordination and shared work. We are trying to be in line. We are in line with the goals of the general plan, Thrive Montgomery 2050, which we sought to develop safe and accessible environments and a connected social environment. a healthy and resilient natural environment, and also to promote the creation of competitive economic environments. And under each one of those categories, we have pulled out certain topics, certain concepts that we have developed further within the body of the document that you have access to. We have provided, we've treated these as resources urban design and land use strategies and goals. And the items that are involved in the subscriptions are further described in the document. For example, we have described guides, initiatives to achieve human scale design. We also have a section to discuss a park once district. I mean, the idea of consolidating parking to promote walkability and ensure that people park only once in a certain location. We also are promoting the idea of public spaces as civic centers of community and as properties redevelop or create infill development within existing campuses. We're looking for those spaces to serve both the new development and adjacent communities as well. We have a section on biophilic design. We have listed the principles for biophilic design as they are included as part of one of the tier requirements on the overlay zone to ensure that as development comes in, there is some discussion as part of the development on new construction to include sustainable priorities as part of development. And we have also included a section on parameters to develop the area as an innovation district, which is one of the priorities of the master plan. And again, all these are described in more detail in the document that you have access to. One thing that I wanted to mention as part of all this is that the master plan recommends the creation of a place management organization. And the notion was that this organization is going to be the entity that will steer the implementation of all these goals and initiatives. That organization is not yet in place. Properties, as they come in for redevelopment, we are being encouraged to still pursue all these elements. But the implementation of this entity would ensure a holistic implementation throughout the area that would involve stakeholders and will define a cohesive mission for the entire area to move forward. The document is organized in three basic sections. We have an introduction that discusses the purpose of the guidelines, the areas where the guidelines apply, design excellence elements, and it also includes a list of implementation tools that include the overlay zone, And that will also include our new implementation guidelines as well as a complete streets guide that are part of the work that the department has done in the past. We outline within this document also the visions for Thrive Montgomery 2050. And we list urban design and land use strategies, as we mentioned before, and also have a section that describes in detail building and open space design elements for various types of building and construction. Then we go into the guidelines for the Life Sciences Center, where we actually provide guidance for each one of the opportunity sites. We also included one of the enclaves of the Londonderry area as one of the areas of this plan where the guidelines will apply. And in addition to that, we have included additional guidance for campus redevelopment and townhouse scale infill development as requested by both property owners and our colleagues in the West County Division who have seen a lot of development of this type coming to the area as well. We also have a section on placemaking, and then we have a conclusion and some resources that will provide links to the sources where all the information that informed our goals can be accessed. The Life Sciences Center is basically focused on the opportunities for sites that were identified by the master plan, as shown in the map in here. We have also included, as mentioned, one of the enclaves. which is the London Dairy Hall's addition area. And the guidance that is being provided consists of two separate types of guidelines. We have provided, we have created maps for each one of the sites that delineate approximate locations of master plan streets and establish priorities for building frontages. recommend approximate locations for public open space, and provide suggestions for appropriate transitions to existing development or neighboring communities. We have also included vignettes with groups of precedent images to illustrate infill development types. And these images should help to convey the types of development that we anticipate would happen in these properties, the character of the public realm improvements, what types of public open space and amenities we expect development will deliver, and also enhance quality of connectivity and access. And the way this all comes together, this is a sample page from the guidelines for one of the opportunity sites. And in each one of these, we include a diagram that prioritizes the design elements on the property. And that includes some guidance that is specific for particular parts of the property. And it also includes a vignette of images that starts to hint at the type of character that we anticipate the block will develop. In this case, because this property is in front of one of the major recommendations of the master plan, which is a transformation of Key West Avenue into a multi-model green connection, The expectation is not necessarily that this development will deliver a segment of this road, but that whatever frontage improvements that they deliver as part of their redevelopment process will contribute to the future transformation of this connection. And regarding the additional strategies that I mentioned before, when we met with property owners, I mean, they... The word specific in mentioning that this area predominantly today is a campus format area. I mean, the reason why development mostly come to this area is because there's a loose arrangement of buildings and campuses, and that makes it attractive for corporations to come here. So they suggested that we included some guidance on how to transition those campuses into something that is a little bit more urban and more fitting within what the master plan recommends as a downtown area. So we have included guidance to transform all their office and science campuses into complete communities via strategies like adaptive reuse, infill construction, additional mixed use development by adding placemaking and amenities to existing or new open space by creating quality new open space. and by considering adequate transitions to adjacent neighborhoods. There's also an interest and a growing interest in this area on pursuing infill townhouse development. We have seen a couple of properties within the Life Sciences Center area that have come in with pre-applications for infill development of this type. So our colleagues in the West County area suggested we should include a section that describes this in more detail so they have something to work with as applications of this type come through our doors. And so we've created a section that describes townhouse-scale infill development as residential infill that should include or consider walkable blocks and street networks, diverse housing options, integrated green infrastructure, accessible open space, context-sensitive transitions, multimodal mobility options, and phased implementation. And again, when we talk about design guidelines and all the information that we have included in our document, None of these are mandates. I mean, these are suggestions to consider as development comes in. Some developments will be able to implement some of the things that we have included within the document. Others may not. But we like the ability to have the conversation as part of the regulatory process as they come in.

But aren't these in the master plan? We have put all of these goals in the master plan. What is In here, that is not in the previous page. You didn't have it in the master plan. As I remember, you had put all of those there.

Yeah, I think a good way to think about the guidelines is that they give vision to the words of a master plan. So while the master plan has specific recommendation, mostly in text form, to list out these goals or to suggest where more street connections are needed or more open spaces needed. The guidelines actually attempt to show ways to achieve those recommendations as suggestions. So it's intended to be a companion to the master plan as opposed to being a repetition of what's in the master plan, if that's a helpful way to understand about this.

Can I ask one thing specifically about... This is not on the screen we're seeing right now, but in the actual guidelines. On page 44, I apologize to kind of go into the weeds on this specific point, but the strategy to deliver diverse housing options, we talk about it all the time. That's great. We definitely need that in as many places as possible. One of the bullet points here talks about... taller buildings, or I guess generally buildings with larger massing or more density along higher classification roads, smaller building types along lower classification roads. And I'm wondering, what's the thinking behind that? And what's the rationale?

The rationale, typically from a high level, we make that association. When you have a higher classification road, we expect that greater density will be located close to that road.

Is that an expectation or is that a desired outcome? Because I'm not We talk about this in other contexts with corridor planning, that generally we're putting much of our density along larger roads. And I've mentioned this before, that I'm not convinced that that's the only place density should go, that we should put more people along our busier, less safe, more air polluted roads, corridors. I think that we can accommodate more density beyond that, and particularly with neighborhoods that are sort of building up from a place of, it's not exactly greenfield in these areas, but a place where it's not typical infill in an existing residential neighborhood. These are neighborhoods where we have, theoretically, more opportunity to design it or lay the bones as we would prefer. And I think this could be an opportunity to put more density along smaller streets, for example. And I'm not sure why that's not, in terms of what we're sort of, signaling to developers why that's something we wouldn't at least contemplate, if not outright suggest.

I can maybe address that a little bit. I think that the thought process behind this recommendation was, so this plan area, there's a number of existing super blocks with very large roads that circle them. And you'll probably see some plans coming through in the next few months that are using, for example, the CRR process. And what they are doing is they are starting to introduce, and I think this is a positive thing, a range of building types. So we have a plan that is contemplating locating a five-, six-story apartment building, some two-over-twos, and then some townhouses. So from a design perspective, but also from a comfort and quality of life perspective, we felt that being able to place apartment buildings that are more comfortable, of an internal living building type that are also taller that they don't feel too exposed when they're sited next to a six-lane road would be better places, would be better building types to locate as opposed to having a three-story townhouse with a front yard fronting onto an eight-lane road. So that's where I think there's two components here. One that... Some of the lower building types we felt that would have outdoor living spaces would be actually better suited on the smaller classification roads. And the second piece is just from a design and the feeling of containment and having a comfortable environment, you want to try to get as close as possible to... a one-to-one vertical-to-horizontal ratio. I'm getting a little nerdy here, but... So those are the two reasons why I think the recommendation is in here, and we do think that putting apartment buildings along larger streets is a better approach than putting very small buildings like townhouses.

Yeah, and I don't think that... I apologize just to that point. I also don't think that we should put, you know, townhomes on large six-lane... highways um obvious you know there are the recent ztas sort of enable that in other situations but in terms of design guidelines i guess what i'm suggesting is i don't think we should limit ourselves to saying that the you know mid-rise or even something approaching high-rise just focus on mid-rise like should should only go on larger roads i take your point that there is conventionally, this idea of verticality with the horizontal width of the right of way, that there's some aesthetically pleasing or something about the way that it provides for some amount of comfort. But I also know that that's not a hard and fast. I don't think that's a hard and fast rule. And I also think there's a lot of different ways to accomplish that. beyond saying that it needs to be a certain road classification. I think you can still say that there's that ratio without having to say it needs to be six lanes of road. Maybe the overall width is the same or something similar. But I think the larger point is I would love us to get to a point where we can both envision and encourage more density, not alongside larger roads. I think that's sort of what I'm getting at here. And if the design guidelines are going to sort of get at your point, which is that there's this idea that we want the sense of enclosure and the feeling of comfort on the street, 100%, but I think we can talk about that in ways that don't refer to the size of the road, if that makes sense, which relates to other things like traffic and vehicle throughput and other things.

I think that's a good point. And the truth is, this is mostly all infill. So where these buildings can even be placed to begin with is to a large extent going to be dictated by where there is a parking lot that can be put to better and higher use or where there is sort of the lack of too much grade to make a road connection. But we take your point well. I think that's a very good point. And as these projects do come through, I hope it will be evident that Responding to the site contacts, the guidelines are generally sort of giving some parameters, and if we need to be open-minded and creative about where density can be placed on a site, that that's done on a site-by-site basis. That's absolutely correct.

Sorry, I won't take up too much. Hardy's giving me the we're-going-to-play-off look. But I think to Commissioner Linden's point, I think it's well taken, and I was looking through some of the staff report recently. I think that if we're talking about it within a site-based context, assume the square, one side's a smaller, one side's a larger road, I understand wanting to tweak the design within a particular site that comes to us of, say, can you move this here and move the towns back there? I think that's interesting. I do think that we've got Historically an attempt to really over regulate where different and we we emphasize the one in mixed use mixed types of housing twos Townhomes that that's that's good And I think we've got this history of wanting to try to over regulate where different types of housing goes I just don't want to make sure that we're not I think to commission lens point recreating that on a micro scale within within this I think your point I think to my reading it's more of a site-by-site basis right if the if the six is here and You know, the two-lane is over here. We've got a configuration, and I think that any developer would probably come to us with a configuration that would adjust to that, to those considerations. I think the bigger issue might be six-lane roads, but that's a different design question to have. But we do go through when some of these comes, and we ensure certain things, and we recommend certain other things. I just, when we're going through the, you know, we're talking about the language. You know, one that particularly popped out is ensure every unit is within a two- or three-minute walk of public open space, which I think is good. But in this context, I think in particular, it's going to have to include private, publicly accessible open space and make sure that we do that. We have ensure in some places and recommend in others. And I think there is an argument to be made for a little bit of leniency when returning that, particularly when we're We're doing the implementation when they come to us with a plan. And so I think, to Commissioner Linden's point, I tend to agree with that. We want the mix. We want the density. We do want the density to be spread as much as possible. And whether we're treating a townhome as a single family and a two over two as a multi, where do we make that split so that we're making sure that there's not a certain income stratification based on density? of apartment residents and others being closer to either the pollution aspects, the traffic, you know, fatalities. We know that volume is going to increase with interactions with pedestrians. We know that information. I think all the other, I think the recommendations generally in design are good, but I think it is something to keep an eye on when we're discussing these, you know, the specific implementation of programs.

Just one more minute. I agree. The other thing that I think We need to consider, because we do these guidelines, it could be for 20 years, 30 years, we don't know. But the market condition dictates what the developer can do. And I think that they have to be flexible enough that based on the market condition, they still can do it. We don't want them to, if they can build something now, we want them to do it now, not to wait another five or ten years that the condition changes.

Those are all very good points, and I think those are all duly noted. I will say as well that pretty much every opportunity site that you're seeing in the guidelines, we've coordinated extensively with the property owners. They have seen... version 1, version 2, version 3 of these diagrams. The fact that nobody's testifying here today is, I think, a testament to the fact that they feel comfortable with what is in the guidelines. I think we can be very clear about the fact that these are all infill projects that are going to be unique. It's not a green fill site. It's not start from scratch. And most of these will come to the board as well. And in the guidelines, I think one of the things we've been very sort of cognizant of is to make sure that wherever we do have guidelines that talk about a diagram for a map or even up front in the document, it's very clearly spelled out that these are suggestions. They are not hard recommendations. These are for illustrative purposes only. And applicants have flexibility to meet the intent of the master plan through other strategies, which may or may not be even known to us at this moment in time.

Can I just add one very quick thing, and then we can, yeah, I apologize, and we can move on from this. But I think I would, you know, just to come back to the point, I would feel more comfortable if we just didn't use words like appropriate when describing sort of what we were talking about before, that it's sort of more appropriate for these certain building types to be along this type of road. I think it's just, it's applying, it's to, you know, there's a lot within that word and it assumes a lot about sort of some of the things that Commissioner Hedrick was getting at. There is an income stratification element about who's going to be living in the apartment buildings relative to the townhomes and is it appropriate for them to be alongside the larger road compared to the probably homeowners who are further away. There's a lot kind of baked into that. It's a little bit of a loaded word. And if we're just recommending it, then we can deal with some of these issues at site plan. And I'm not sure we sort of need it within a design guideline. But we are saying ensure. This is a place where the language does say ensure appropriate. So I would, you know, if staff is comfortable with it, I would at least like to revisit this particular kind of section of it.

Are there specific parts of the document where you would want us to... I mean, this is the point of this is to get your feedback. So tell us where you're thinking we can adjust and we are... Well, this particular one is on page 44 under...

Number two, deliver diverse housing options to support multiple household types. And then the second bullet under that is where it says, ensure building types fit appropriately along different street conditions and open space edges with taller buildings along higher classification roads, smaller buildings along lower classification roads.

There's on page 44, bullet number

And we don't need to, you know, I don't think we necessarily need to workshop it kind of on the fly here, but I would love to see kind of a revision of that if possible.

What if it just ended after the word edges? Ensure building types fit appropriately along different street conditions and open space edges, period. We're open to interpretation and conversation with the applicants.

Yeah, I think that's a lot better. That's a lot better. I don't want to sort of fixate completely on the word appropriate. I mean, it sort of removes the second half, and so it's not exactly sort of making the suggestion of what appropriate is for anymore. So I guess that's fine for our purposes here, and I'm not pretending like this is a law that they will follow 100%.

None of this gives us any pause at all because we see the back end of this and how we're using them, and it checks all the boxes of what is being requested of here. So we're happy to change the language. It's a 100-and-some-page document. If that's all the change we need, we're happy to make the change.

Why don't we do that, and we move on? Because at the end of the day, this is a... big picture, and then let's finish and then we can have any final comments based on the whole thing. Is that right?

Yeah, yeah. But it's, you know, the higher conversation, the larger conversation I think is outside of this is also important to continue. I think that it'd be good to sort of Because this is a reflection of how we collectively are thinking about this, which then flows into how we deal with site plans. It flows into sort of everything, including future master plans. So I would love to keep talking about this and see if we can find a path forward. I think that's a great point.

And honestly, we would love to get some guidance on what should be along these roads. Like if we don't want... larger buildings if we don't want open spaces like what and but we at the same time we are saying we want to concentrate growth along these corridors and what goes there is it sounds sounds like a perfect topic for the innovation lab it's a pretty pretty good question yeah so why don't why don't we keep going mr strata okay so um just two more topics um we included a section on police making

And then we're encouraging that opportunities for developing activation strategies that are of a temporary nature be entertained at various areas of the plan. And I'm trying to make this quick. And before we wrap, we did receive one request for a clarification of the language associated with the Bellword form. And it's a simple addition to our language. The legal representatives of Johns Hopkins suggested that the language that we included regarding the historic Bellwood Farm buildings be closer to what's in the council resolution of approval for the Great Seneca Plan. And then they've suggested that we added the language, the items in red, and there to be more specific about which buildings of the historic grouping are the ones that should be entertained for adaptive reuse. We didn't list the buildings specifically, but they're suggesting that we add the buildings to the language.

Was this the intent of the historic preservation of the historic Bellwood farm buildings? What they are asking for was that when we It's in the master plan.

It's in the master plan. It's in the master plan. And again, what they're saying is that they want the language in the guidelines to be closer to what the council resolution for the plan spelled out. So they want us to add the actual buildings that are part of the historic grouping, which we have no problem doing. And with that, you know, our recommendation is to approve the Great Seneca Design Guidelines, and we welcome any questions or suggestions at this point.

Okay.

Well, let me, yeah, thank you for your putting together these guidelines. It's a lot of work, and I appreciate that. And what I'd say is that the master plan was almost like a two-dimensional, you know, with a lot of words, and I like how this is, more visionary. It didn't say you have to do it, but it's, you know, it gives people a picture. It gives me a picture of what we're trying to put together. So I think that was very helpful to me. And as I understand what Commissioner Pettawan is at, as long as they are not, you must, because we need to bring some creativity of the developer and, you know, that's coming in with a with their that actually implementing it and also a Financing it and so give some flexibility I I thought this document could be used for developers for the planning staff for also the could be a marketing tool for the Montgomery County Department of Economic Development because it gets nice like this is what we're looking for our community, so I think it could be also a used as a marketing tool, pieces of it to share with economic development, see what it is as a marketing tool. So I thought that was really, really good. And I liked how you fleshed out more on the opportunity sites and worked with the developers of those sites. I thought that was really, really good. I think anything that helps more with the vision and get their buy-in is very, very good. So the wonderful sketches and renderings. And then one of the pieces that my question is, is this place management organization, how do we support? And I know it was part of the... So some of this, this is a really big area, like some of those roadways, how you wanted to go from six or eight lanes down and make... more placemaking on the re-envision of lanes. And I mean, I see in many organizations and many places where you need this. It's almost like a development corporation, something to help make that happen. These are not just small sites with individuals. These are huge. And a lot of the placemaking stuff you wanted or the site open space pieces and all that. And how do you fund that? How do you make that happen? I think many larger communities have some sort of this place management organization. But how does that get started? How does that move forward?

So I'll just say that I know that there was a lot of discussion when this plan was at the council over this and how it was referred to and what its role would be. And who would be organizing and overseeing that is, I think, something that is still needs to be talked through. And so I think the fact that you're raising this is something that we can bring back to our West County Planning Division and raise it with them and see what their thoughts are on kind of implementing that further. I don't know if Atul or anyone else had anything on that, but I think that would probably be the best mechanism is to work with our West County team and see if we can respond to you separately.

Right, right. imagine, fully implement this vision for Grayson. I think that that really, that probably needs to be at some point in place in helping to raise. So wonderful plan. I really, I mean, guidelines, I really appreciate it. And I guess there was this comment, this change that Vice Chair Linden wanted on page 44, I think you would agree to. And those are my comments. So thank you so much.

Thank you. I don't know. Is that implementation guide? We call it design and implementation guidelines, or do we want this just to be a design guidelines?

I think we had stuck with design guidelines because the moment you start calling things implementation, they start to sound a lot more... rigid, but it's the board's prerogative. We would still recommend to keep it as design guidelines, but we are open to suggestions.

Does it have, the name is not important, but the point is that we have a section in the master plan talks about implementation. I think that as much as it's important to talk about the guidelines for design, Maybe we need to create some kind of guidelines to make the implementation move faster. Just something to think about. It doesn't have to be attached to this or whatever. But frankly, in my opinion, implementation guideline is more important than design guideline, because we want to move this thing, especially in this area that is pretty much needed. So just something to think about.

Comments from the other commissioners? Okay.

Just that I think that it largely looks great. And sorry that I should have led with that. I think it largely is great. And so thank you for the work on it. You know, if we could build out the area exactly like what's in the design guidelines, it would be a wonderful community. So I think it's a great document.

So is there a motion to move forward with the, to finalize, I guess, and move forward with the design guidelines with that one change that we mentioned?

It would be a couple of changes, one requested by the board and another requested by the app.

Yeah, defining what is historic in that bill. Yeah.

Yeah, I'll move to approve and finalize the design guidelines with the updates discussed here today.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. The ayes have it. 5-0. Thank you so much for your hard work. Looking forward to those applications coming in. Thank you. Bye now. And so we're going to take a lunch break, and we'll be back at what time? Yeah, we'll be back at 1.30. Thank you so much. Bye now. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome back. We're on item number eight, the Woodside Locational Atlas District M36-4, removal of the district and an additional of six individual locational atlas sites, where staff is recommending to remove the Woodside Locational Atlas District from the Locational Atlas and Index of Historic Sites and to list six individual sites in the Locational Atlas and index of historic sites. And this afternoon, we have John Lieberts presenting this item. Welcome.

Good afternoon. For the record, John Lieberts, Cultural Resource Planner. As you stated, the purpose of today's public hearing and work session is to put the planning board to evaluate the Woodside Locational Atlas District for removal of the Locational Atlas and index of historic sites. In addition, the board will review six individual properties within the district boundary for listing as individual Locational Atlas sites. The staff request that the planning board takes the following actions. First, find that the Woodside Locational Atlas District does not meet the designation criteria outlined in the county code. Second, remove the Woodside Locational Atlas District from the Atlas. And third, list six resources within the former district as individual sites, allowing them to be evaluated for potential designation in the master plan for historic preservation at a later date. Getting into the evaluation itself, I'll provide brief background on the Locational Atlas, relevant master plan guidance, and prior evaluation efforts for Woodside. Locational Atlas District is located directly northwest of downtown Silver Spring. The area is generally bound by 16th Street to the north, Spring and Ballard Streets to the south, Georgia Avenue to the east, and the railroad tracks to the west. On the eastern side of Georgia Avenue is Grace Episcopal Church and Cemetery. Woodside Location Atlas District is one of the original districts placed on the Atlas. The Planning Board created the Atlas in 1976 based on a countywide survey that identified resources at least 100 years old. Properties included in the Atlas receive partial protection from demolition and substantial alteration until they are formally evaluated. To date, the Planning Board has not evaluated the district against the designation criteria. It's also important to note that the board may add or remove properties from the Atlas at any time following a public hearing, and these actions do not require review by the county council. So moving on to master plan guidance. In the early 1990s, Historic Preservation staff began its evaluation of the district. However, the effort was suspended in 1992 at the request of the Civic Association. Two years later, the Maryland Historical Trust found Woodside potentially eligible for the National Register of Historic Places during a determination of eligibility review for a single property rehabilitation project. Although this determination does not influence the county's designation process, it underscored the district's potential significance for its late 19th and early 20th century dwellings. In 2000, the North and West Silver Spring Master Plan deferred further evaluation due to staffing limitations, but acknowledged that future efforts should consider designation of the entire district or individual resources. And most recently, the 2020 Forest Glen Montgomery Hill Sector Plan identified evaluation of the district as a short-term work program item and reaffirmed that the outcome could include designation of a district or individual properties. According to more recent efforts, in coordination with the Woodside Civic Association, historic preservation staff initiated a comprehensive analysis of the district following the completion of the Forest Glen Montgomery Hill Sector Plan, and the analysis focused on two central questions. First, whether the original boundary accurately captured Woodside's railroad and streetcar suburban development, and second, whether the Woodside Locational Atlas District aptly represents a railroad and streetcar suburb in Montgomery County. Staff presented preliminary findings to the community in 2020 and recommended removal of the district and the listing of six individual sites in the Atlas. Soon thereafter, Montgomery Planning paused our evaluation efforts to allow for the completion of other planning initiatives, primarily the Silver Spring Downtown and adjacent communities plan. So before presenting SAS findings, I'll briefly walk through the historic context that informs our evaluation. For this presentation, I'll focus on the history of the land since the mid-19th century. So the present boundaries of Woodside lie partially within the former Wilson family plantation established in the mid-18th century. Although few physical remnants of this period remain, it is important to acknowledge the history and impact of slavery and land use during the antebellum era. The Wilson family enslaved African Americans who cultivated tobacco before the plantation transitioned to other crops. In 1855, tax assessment listed 12 enslaved individuals by name and age, Hanson, Moses, Samuel, Jack, Samuel, Mary, Laura, Sarah, Eliza, Lucy, and Erie. And by the mid-19th century, Thomas and Sarah Wilson had expanded their plantation to more than 1,000 acres, making them among the wealthiest landowners in the area. Their residence stood near the present-day intersection of Spring Street and Georgia Avenue. And the photograph shown here depicts the house prior to its demolition in the mid-20th century.

I have a question. When you say several large land grants, including the Joseph's Park and Labyrinth, Who was the grantor?

Often Calvert, so from the state of Maryland, the governor of Maryland at the time in the 1700s. He was representative of the crown.

So it was state, or in that case, province. It was owned land that was granted out to individuals directly from Calvert.

From the royal governor of Maryland.

Yeah, I guess not state, but government. Excuse me, government, yeah. No, no state. Great, thank you.

In the 1850s, Richard Wilson, the son of Thomas and Sarah, established a 120-acre farm on his father's land on the west side of Georgia Avenue, shown here outlined in red. Like his parents, Richard, and his wife, Laura, they enslaved African-Americans who worked on the property. Their house, pictured on this slide, remains standing at 81A First Avenue. Richard and Laura's property largely corresponds to the original boundary of the Woodside subdivision. The Civil War significantly impacted the landscape of present-day Woodside and the surrounding region, with Georgia Avenue serving as the major access route into Washington, D.C. After the war, Laura Wilson submitted a claim for $5,681 for damage to her property by the Union Army, citing the loss of fencing, hay, oats, corn, livestock, among other items. On March 5, 1899, President McKinley signed a claims bill appropriating $175,000 to compensate property owners for Civil War losses. And Laura Wilson ultimately received $1,455. Shown here is an 1865 map. The red arrow identifies the Richard and Laura Wilson House, and the yellow arrow marks Grace Episcopal Church on the opposite side of Georgia Avenue. The Metropolitan Branch of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad opened in Montgomery County. The railroad revitalized the county's agricultural economy by opening access to larger markets and accelerating suburban development. Real estate speculators quickly capitalize on these opportunities, establishing new railroad suburbs near Washington, D.C., including Linden, Tacoma Park, Forest Glen, Capital V Park, Garrett Park, among others. This 1878 map shows the rail line as it passed the Silver Spring area. The yellow arrow points to the Grace Episcopal Church and Cemetery, along with its parsonage on the opposite side of Georgia Avenue. The parsonage, completed in 1869, remained standing at 9120 Georgia Avenue. So this brings us to the beginning of Woodside's development as a railroad suburb. In 1889, Benjamin Layden purchased a Wilson property from Laura Wilson for $23,000 following the death of her husband. He filed a subdivision plat for Woodside that same year. In 1890, he expanded the subdivision to the north by further dividing both the Wilson farm and an adjacent farm owned by the Sissels. Leighton promoted Woodside's healthy environment and its multiple transportation options, including proximity to George Avenue and the Metropolitan Branch. These amenities appeal to upper-middle-class residents seeking to escape Washington, D.C., while maintaining commuter access to the city. An early homeowner has primarily built residences in the popular Victorian era and colonial revival styles. The promotional map shown here illustrates the full extent of Woodside as subdivided by Leyden. The Fenwick train station is located in the southwestern corner, circled in red. The Wilson house is also visible, circled in blue. Laura Wilson purchased this entire block after the subdivision sale and continued to reside in her house. And Grace Episcopal Church and its parsonage are circled in green. So the next major phase of development followed the arrival of the streetcar that opened home ownership to the growing middle class. In 1897, the Washington, Woodside, and Forest Glen Railway and Power Company began service with tracks running along the east side of Georgia Avenue. The line stopped at Silver Spring, Sligo, Woodside, and Forest Glen, providing an additional and convenient mode of transportation. Real estate developers capitalized on this for improved access and marketed Montgomery County to Washington's expanding white middle class, promoting the appeal of affordable suburban living. New construction reflected earlier 20th century architectural trends, including colonial revival, American forest squares, and craftsman style bungalows. This 1917 map, however, illustrates the area's lack of concentrated development at that time, as the individual black squares represent houses on the map. With the historic context in mind, I'll now transition to staff's evaluation of the Woodside Locational Atlas District. I'll start by summarizing our overall findings before walking through a map analysis that supports these conclusions. Staff recommends removing Woodside from the Atlas. The Woodside Locational Atlas District does not merit inclusion in the Master Plan for Historic Preservation as it fails to meet the designation criteria for historical and cultural significance. The district does not adequately reflect the development patterns or cultural and economic heritage of Montgomery County. Its imprecise boundary, limited development during its period of significance, and the extensive demolition of late 19th and early 20th century resources all diminish its ability to represent a railroad and streetcar suburb. Preserving a district with minimal historic significance and greatly diminished integrity is not critical to understanding the county's past. More specifically, the district does not meet the designation criteria for architectural and design significance. While several individual resources are representative of their period of construction, this does not make the entire district significant or distinctive. Woodside lacks the architectural cohesion characteristic of other railroad and streetcar suburbs in Montgomery County. The substantial loss of original houses, many lost before the district was added to the Atlas in 76, further erodes its integrity and its ability to convey the architectural character found in comparable communities. The widespread distribution of non-contributing resources leaves the remaining historic fabric too fragmented to support a credible designation. So the next six slides walk through the mapping analysis that demonstrates how we reach these conclusions. And each map illustrates a key point of the staff's findings outlined on this slide. To start, I'll briefly touch on our methodology. Staff agreed with early assessments for Woodside that established a period of significance from 1889 through the end of the streetcar era in the 1920s. And to evaluate whether the district possesses historical significance and retains architectural integrity, staff utilized the property atlas in Montgomery County from 1931 shown on the screen. The property Atlas provides a baseline for understanding earlier development patterns and serves as a point of comparison with current conditions. The first map looks at the original location Atlas boundary. It demonstrates that the Woodside Locational Analyst District presents an incomplete narrative of the community's settlement and development patterns as a railroad and streetcar suburb. The district, shown here shaded pink, excludes part of the original Woodside subdivision outlined in blue, Benjamin Layden's contemporaneously plotted addition to Woodside outlined in red, and the North Woodside subdivision outlined in green. In total, the Locational Atlas District boundary captures only 24% of all buildings shown on the property atlas, even before accounting for demolitions. The boundary is ill-defined and does not reflect the logical grouping of resources. As a result, the Woodside Locational Atlas District cannot satisfy designation criteria related to historic or architectural significance. Our second map focuses on when the existing buildings were constructed. So the map illustrates four different periods of construction, the pre-Woodside era before 1889, shown in blue, the first period of development, also the period of significance from 1889 to 1929, shown in green, the second period of development from 1930 to 1979, shown in yellow, and the third period of development from 1980 to 2020, shown in orange. As the map makes clear, approximately 89% of the existing houses within the district were constructed after 1929. The district, therefore, does not reflect its period of significance through the built environment. The lack of architectural integrity and cohesiveness further supports staff's recommendation for its removal from the Atlas. The third map returns to the 1931 property atlas to examine demolition patterns. The map shows the extent of demolitions within the original Woodside subdivision and the locational atlas district. It identifies 33 standing resources, shown in blue, and 44 demolished resources, shown with the hatching. This demonstrates that demolitions affected a majority of the resources associated with the period of significance. These losses include not only all the resources south of Spring Street, a significant portion of the subdivision that was excluded from the Atlas because of its complete demolition, as well as numerous houses throughout the district itself. Collectively, these demolitions adversely affect the potential significance and integrity of any historic district in Woodside. Moreover, the map highlights the number of undeveloped lots, underscoring Woodside's overall limited development when compared with other suburbs from the same era.

Can you talk a little bit more about why there was so much demolition of the houses in there? It seems high, relatively speaking, I would think, but I'm just curious.

I think part of the area south of Spring Street had to do with the expansion of Silver Spring, as Silver Spring continued to have more commercial development and just higher density. And then within Woodside... There just was a high number of demolitions of these resources that probably did not for one particular reason.

Okay. Yeah, I was just curious. It seems awfully high for an area of that location that wasn't a, you know, didn't have an interstate run through it or something like that. I was curious. Thank you.

Sort of one follow-up on that real quick was when 16th Street went in, did that account for, did that demolish any of the homes in the area?

It removed a couple of lots, and there was a subdivision by Rosier Beach that actually tried to capitalize on the construction of 16th Street. But by the time, and it was supposed to originally cut through Woodside, and they relocated it. to where it is today. And so the relocation of Woodside to its present day location actually caused less demolitions than would have occurred. But at that time, when they were developing, they were already considering how to capitalize on what 16th Street would be. So this map takes a closer look at the remaining resources from the period of significance. Staff determined how many of these resources would likely be considered contributing and non-contributing. Of the 33 resources, only 25 resources, shown here in blue, retained sufficient architectural integrity to be considered contributing. Seven resources, shown here in yellow, were identified as non-contributing. And one resource, shown in green, was moved from its original location to another site within the district. When viewed alongside the widespread demolition of resources, the presence of these seven non-contributing houses further undermines the historic integrity of any potential district. pulls these findings together and is the most persuasive argument against the creation of a woodside historic district. Fewer than 10% of the resources date to the period of significance and would be classified as contributing. This is simply an insufficient number to create a historic district and, as a result, the district fails to meet the designation criteria for historic or architectural significance and should be removed from the Atlas. Staff finds that there is no viable historic district, we did identify several individual resources that remain potentially historically and architecturally significant on their own merit. Six resources within the district exemplify a high architectural style or embody distinctive historical narratives demonstrating an exceptional connection to the community's past. Staff proposes retaining these resources on the Atlas to allow for future More detailed evaluations for potential designation in the master plan for historic reservation. These resources include Grace Church Cemetery and Personage, the Richard and Laura Wilson House at 8818 First Avenue, the Charles and Kate Morgan House at 8730 First Avenue, the Dr. James Everard and Elizabeth Junkin Benedict House at 1613 Highland Drive, the Ballard and Estelle Morris House at 1515 Noise Drive, in the Wilbur and Nellie Parsley House at 8800 First Avenue. As a reminder, to be listed in the locational atlas, individual sites must potentially satisfy the designation criteria as outlined in the county code. I'll start with Grace Church Cemetery and Parsonage. The site is potentially eligible for listing in the Master Plan for Historic Preservation due to its historical, cultural, and architectural significance. The congregation has worshipped and utilized this property for burials over 150 years. Collectively, the church, cemetery, and parsonage form a cohesive cultural landscape that anchors Woodside and Silver Springs architectural and social history. The present church, designed by noted regional architect Dana Barris-Johannes, was completed in 1957, and it stands as an important architectural landmark. The parsonage, completed in 1869, is the second oldest house in Woodside and the oldest surviving building associated with Grace Episcopal Church. Staff finds that the site potentially meets designation criteria 1A, 1D, 2A, 2C, and 2E for individual listing in the atlas. the Richard and Laura Wilson House. The resource is potentially eligible for designation in the Master Plan for Historic Preservation for its historical, cultural, and architectural significance. The Wilson family owned land in the area beginning in the 18th century and accumulated wealth through the labor of enslaved African Americans. The house, built in the 1850s, reflects early agricultural settlement patterns, the legacy of slavery in the Civil War in Montgomery County, and the subsequent transformation of Silver Spring and Woodside into a railroad suburb along the metropolitan branch of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Staff finds that the house potentially satisfies designation criteria 1A, 1D, and 2A for individual listing. Next is the Charles and Kate Morgan House. It is potentially eligible for designation due to its architectural significance. Along with the Benedict House, it is representative of late Victorian-era architecture from Woodside's formative period as a railroad suburb. The house features a distinctive three-story square tower, cat-bire pyramidal roof, and a one-story front porch. These features collectively reflect the complex massing, form, and design elements characteristic of the period and the style. Staff finds that the Morgan House potentially satisfies designation criteria 2A. Next, we have the Junkin-Benedict House, which is potentially eligible for designation due to its architectural significance and its association with Dr. James Everett Benedict Sr. The circuited 1892 house is emblematic of the late Victorian era from Woodside's formative period as a railroad suburb. Dr. Benedict was a prominent marine biologist who retired as chief of the biological exhibits at the National Museum and lived at the dwelling for over 50 years. He was widely regarded by colleagues as one of the leading marine biologists of his era, and he also patented a sounding tube used by the Navy and Merchant Marines, among others. Staff finds that the Benedict House potentially satisfies designation criteria 1C for its association with Benedict and for 2A for individual listing in the locational house. Next, we have the Morris House, which is potentially eligible for designation due to its architectural significance. The Morris family built the colonial revival-style house in 1895 at the establishment of Woodside at the railroad suburb. It stands as the most architecturally distinct example of colonial revival influence architecture within the Woodside Locational Atlas District. Staff finds that the Morris House potentially satisfies destination criteria 2A for individual listing. And lastly, we have the Wilbur and Nellie Parsley House. It is potentially eligible for designation due to its architectural significance. Constructed in 1926, it is the largest and most highly styled craftsman bungalow in the district, dating from the neighborhood's transition from a streetcar to automobile-centric suburb. Staff finds that the Parsley House potentially satisfies designation criteria 2A for individual listing. To conclude, I'll outline the Historic Preservation Commission and staff recommendations. The Historic Preservation Commission held its public hearing and work session in April of 2026. The commission unanimously supported the staff recommendation. Of note, the owner of 8800 First Avenue, the Parsley House, objected to the listing of their property and the locational atlas. Staff in the Historic Preservation Commission again recommends that the Planning Board takes the following actions. First, find that the Woodside Locational Atlas District does not meet the designation criteria. Second, recommend that the Planning Board removes the Atlas District from the Atlas and Index of Historic Sites. And lastly, that the planning board lists six resources from the district as individual occasional outlist sites for future evaluation for potential designation in the master plan for historic preservation. I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Mr. Lieberts, for always your very detailed and thoughtful presentations. I just had a question. There were some very large houses built back then. They were fairly, fairly large, and it's amazing. Also, the last one, the Craftsman House, one time, because of the railroad, some of those homes were, this wasn't a Sears Craftsman House. Do you think that it was built on site, or was it brought on a railroad? And do you have any sense of what that is?

As part of our, if this was listed on the Atlas and we did a future evaluation, we'd probably take a deeper dive to see if we can determine the potential architect for this house or if there was some type of kit house. The garage, which you can kind of see on the corner of the house here, is actually an original element. And a lot of these kid houses didn't have those elements, how it's designed there. But with additional investigation, I think we'll have a much clearer idea in the future about the origins of this house on the property.

Also, could you tell me the process So an owner does not want his or her house to be on the listed. Is that part of, can you opt out of being listed? Or is that sort of a wholly different process? I live in Tocoma Park, and they have a historic district. And I know the residents could, at the time when they establish a district, opt in or out. What is the process?

This is Rebecca Balow for the record. The only criteria to determine listing or not are really in Chapter 24A. Does the property meet architectural or historical criteria that we have in the ordinance? Owner consent is not one of the criteria that is listed in the law in the ordinance. Though, as you say, I can't confirm or deny what happened when Tacoma Park was listed. There was certainly nothing in the record for that where that I've seen that people said, I want to opt out. And therefore, the county council opted them out of it. But as is always the case, this is a political process. So when things do come to the county council, they may take public testimony into account. They may weigh other public benefits, other public goods against the designation of a property, and so come to a different conclusion that is not entirely based on the criteria.

Great. What I said was what I heard. I don't know if that's true or not, but that was just what... And also...

I've heard the same.

Yeah, yeah. How does... So this is... This district, your recommendation is not to make it a district, you know, D-list, whatever. How does this compare to, like, other historic districts? I don't know. Maybe it's a big... broad question, but I just kind of get a sense of other historic districts. Oh, you have a slide.

So for example, we have the Tacoma Park Historic District and the Chevy Chase Village Historic District. And if we look at these, the purple and the red here show outstanding and contributing properties on the left, right? So you can see that most of the district is purple or red, and they contribute to the character of the district, either as an outstanding property contributing property. There are very few non-contributing properties. And similarly, for the Chevy Chase Village District on the right, again, you have the light blue and the purple are, again, those outstanding and contributing resources, which really dominate the map when we compare it to Woodside, which was a very low percent of houses. And so that's just as a point of comparison in terms of why we felt that Woodside did not satisfy the designation criteria, really due to the number of these non-contributing houses that we have within the districts.

You were reading my mind. Thank you for doing that. Thank you. This is very helpful. Appreciate it. I have no other questions or comments.

I have a question. So if a property or a district is designated in the, you know, to be included in the master plan of historic places. That means that they have to be studied, but not necessarily. They are on the master plan, correct?

So right now, we are just looking at, for these six individual sites, we are just really looking at keeping those on the locational atlas so that we can do a full evaluation of each site on their own merit for designation on the master plan at a later date. So the locational atlas, it only protects against substantial alteration or demolition. And so it's a different process in terms of regulatory review. You're also not eligible for historic preservation tax credits. So it's when you're listed on the master plan that you become eligible for the tax credits.

Yeah. Well, the question that I have is that when they are They are recommended to be designated. If they want to do any changes to the property, do they still have to go to HPC?

So you have to submit a historic area work permit to the Historic Preservation Commission. There are staff-approved items that we continue to expand the number of staff approvals. So our staff reviews those and gets those back to property owners within five days. And then for items that have to go to the HPC, they get put on the calendar within 30 days of their submission.

So if a property that you're recommending, if they want to do any renovation, they have to go through the process and also increase the cost for renovation because they have to follow specific requirements, correct? No, I'm so sorry.

This is Rebecca Balov for the record. We are not changing anything. really anything for these six property owners because they are currently in the woodside locational atlas district if they were to demolish or substantially alter their house they would have to submit a permit for hpc review by keeping them as individual sites on the locational atlas That same standard applies. They wouldn't have to come to the HPC. Right now, for example, they don't have to come to the HPC for a fence or a patio or a deck or any of the other sort of minor or even sometimes more than minor work that they do on their properties because the only standard for being on the locational atlas for review is, is it a substantial alteration or is it a demolition? So we're not changing anything for those property owners just by keeping them on the locational atlas. And it is meant to be really a temporary hold for them on the locational atlas. We've discussed with the planning board our work program items to review all the properties on the locational atlas within the next several years. So they will not be – well, first of all, you don't have to pay a fee for historic area work permit anyways, but we're not raising the bar on any requirements for these property owners by this action that we're recommending.

So the other question is that does it going to impact the property values if they are included or excluded. Because we had the area that included all of these houses for, I don't know, for how many years, was sitting there, and they couldn't really do anything major unless they come and get reviewed by HPC. Now we are taking everybody out and say, now you are free, you can do whatever, nothing with HPC, except U6. you have to still stay on that. And I do not know that if that has any impact to the value of their properties.

Historic preservation, the designation or the lack of designation in Montgomery County, does not have an impact on property values from what we've seen. For example, the designated areas in the city of Tacoma Park have the same property values, resale values as their neighbors right across the street that are not designated. The same in Chevy Chase, the same in Kensington. All the zoning rules, everything else that, you know, already applies to the neighbors would still apply even if the Locational Atlas District were removed. And we didn't have design guidelines or, you know, stringent design standards for the Woodside Locational Atlas District. We don't for any of the Locational Atlas Districts. They don't have, like, for example, the City of Tacoma Park. has a multi-page document of design guidelines that says your windows have to be treated like this, your roofs, all the designs of the fences or outbuildings have to look like this. Nothing like that existed for Woodside in the first place. OK. Good. Good. Thank you.

I have some questions. First of all, thanks for a great presentation. I'm always thrilled to learn from you all and you guys do an outstanding job in your research. My first question is when, and if you could refresh my recollection, when was Woodside included in the historical index?

Woodside was one of the original districts included in the Atlas in 1976. 1976, okay.

And then I'm familiar with Woodside. I lived on the edge of Woodside on First Avenue in an apartment called the Georgian Towers. And I lived there for two or three years. And so I was very familiar with the community. I'd walk through it. I got married in the church in Woodside. Children were baptized in that same church in Woodside. And I know that the people that live in Woodside are generally proud of that community. Long before I was on the planning board, I remember an article in the Washington Post, and I don't know exactly what date it was, but I do remember a certain person in the article by the name of Alan Bowser, who was really interested in protecting the Woodside community and its provenance and feel. It's actually an oasis inside the Beltway, and unlike other communities on the outside of the Beltway. And so one of my questions is, how well was this topic advertised, and where was it advertised? Because I'm astonished that there's no one from the Woodside community here to testify in opposition to its removal from the historical index.

So when we started this process in 2019, we had a lot of engagement with the Woodside Civic Association. Ms. Ballow and I attended multiple meetings with the civic association. We held multiple virtual meetings sharing our findings. And there was a lot of engagement in terms of feedback, in terms of our findings, and just the community wanting to come learn about what staff was proposing. To be honest, I think a lot of the community thought after that period that we were moving ahead with delisting Woodside, because that is what the path we said we were taking at that time. But the Silver Spring downtown adjacent community plan put a pause on our efforts with that. I think other projects ended up delaying this into the present day. We reached out back to the civic association. We sent letters to all affected property owners within the district. telling them that the project was restarting, telling them when the Historic Preservation Commission hearing was. And the response we got, again, was just that they had thought that we had already moved forward with our recommendation that we shared with them back in 2019. So I think if we had brought this forward potentially in 2020, you'd have seen more community engagement at that time. But we followed all the legal advertising requirements that were set for delisting.

I can add to that, too. Everything that John said was complete and correct. And between 2020 and now, when we kicked off the project again, I was in regular contact with the civic association. Their officers would reach out to me just kind of asking, hey, what is the status of this project? And I would say annually, this is currently on hold. This is currently on hold. But then I was able to tell them this past year, no, we are reengaging with this. And they also put an item in their community newsletter about it.

That the hearing was actually taking place.

That the hearing was taking place, that we were starting this again, that they had the information about the HPC hearing. They just did another update. Actually, in the latest update, they wanted to know if it had already been done at the planning board. And I was like, no, no, not yet. And remember, all these letters went out to everybody, and the Civic Association knew this. And so they broadcast it amongst their membership as well, in addition to all of the letters that we sent to the property owners and that we put in the paper of record, the Washington Times, to advertise all of our hearings. And we had our notifications on our website and through our social media as well.

Okay, thanks. Next question is, how did the prior... boards and historic preservation committees get it wrong by including Woodside in the historical index?

I don't think anyone necessarily got it wrong. When we did the original Atlas survey in 1976, it was really just about what resources had potential significance. And so Woodside was clearly an area that deserved to be studied. When you go back to those other evaluations done for the National Register, for example, in 1992, it was a very limited scope of that project. It was for the rehabilitation of a single property. They didn't do a new comprehensive survey. They kind of took the information that was already available and was previously done and made some deductions from that information. Maryland Historical Trust, if consultants went back out and surveyed it like we did on a property by property analysis, I think they would come to the same conclusion that Woodside is no longer eligible for the National Register if they took it down to that granular detail. But when you look at it, it was definitely deserving of being studied, I would say.

item points with regards to removing it from the index is that the boundary was ill-defined and too broad. Why not redefine it more narrowly instead of eliminating it?

I think we looked at many different boundary possibilities and that even with a restrained boundary, it still did not collectively express its period of significance as a railroad and streetcar suburb, which is what everyone had a, we identified as that period that was really, it was reflective of. And so when we looked at options, we determined that the best option would be this property by property preserving different aspects of different periods of its of its history. You have from the transition from streetcar to automobile suburb with the bungalow. You have the two of the houses from the earliest period of development. You have the house that predates the creation of Woodside. And this was kind of outlined in previous master plans when they said, look at either individual properties or the entire district itself. And so we were following that guidance when determine that the best course of action for this district would be looking at those properties instead of just shrinking it down to a smaller section.

You pointed out that 89% of the houses were constructed after 1929, and you also pointed out some demolitions that occurred. When those demolitions occurred and new dwelling places were constructed, weren't they constructed in the style and manner that could only be approved by the Historic Preservation Committee to maintain the provenance and look and feel of the community?

Thank you.

This third period of development from 1980 to 2020, which accounted for about 38% of the houses in Orange, you have townhouse development, but you also had single-family development. When the Historic Preservation Commission reviewed these, they tried to ensure that they were architecturally compatible with the with the character of the district that they had before them. And so you do have this new, I think architectural calls it, like new traditional style or interpretations of Queen Anne's. And they took elements from the different architectural periods and tried to incorporate them into the new designs. nine percent of those homes were constructed to look as if they were during constructed during that original period correct they're not to look like they were um replicas but just compatible with you know right so the historic preservation commission looks at compatibility we don't try to create um you know districts that look like historical set pieces okay and then finally is um

Is removing this community from the historical index a prelude to rezoning or a ZTA?

No. No, it is not. It is, again, the Historic Preservation Division, we only have purview over bringing forward listings or delistings to the two planning documents that we are charged with, which is the Locational Atlas and Index of Historic Sites and the master plan for historic preservation. Those are separate and apart from any zoning actions that the planning department as a whole or that the county council may be interested in. So we are just purely looking at architectural and historical significance of the resource absent any other master plans or any other plans that the department or the county may have.

Just one question on my end, and I also wanted to thank you for the work. Like, really interesting history. I live not particularly far from this neighborhood, and I used to ride through it all the time when I was taking my daughter to gymnastics, kind of up it, kind of through this area and across the tracks. And I got to know Second Street quite well. And I, too, noticed that, like, oh, old home, new home. it sort of leapfrogs down the street. But it is a beautiful neighborhood, like to Commissioner Bartley's point, and obviously it makes sense why a lot of people would appreciate its significance, whether it's sort of historically significant as of today, as of these standards or not. But I have one question just to sort of share the concern of Commissioner Pettaweem that... we're retaining six properties and the remaining, however many are kind of released from, they may not be like extremely strict requirements and may not be as costly as other historic districts, um, but still some requirements that they would be, you know, expected to abide by or if they want to do the alterations or other things. Um, And I am a little concerned about that kind of unfairness. But I just wanted to confirm one thing just based on what you said, which is that in this case, are we viewing this as kind of a temporary holding site as you do your review, as you go through all these to determine whether they should move forward to the master plan of historic preservation? Because if so, It's not in perpetuity, and I think that probably resolves some of my concern, as long as we can provide assurances that we will get through this list and make that determination one way or another.

Yes, yes. It is a priority of mine for our work program. It is a priority of the department as well that we move through and evaluate the properties that are remaining on the locational atlas within a time frame that is expeditiously done. In my mind, that means in the next three to five years, frankly. That is my goal for getting through the locational atlas.

And Rebecca, correct me if I speak out of line here, but the locational atlas was never intended to be a permanent status. And we have, obviously, districts and sites that have been on it since the inception in 1976. That's almost as old as me. So that wasn't the intention of it. So we really do want to get through those. But what we're saying in this case is the district as a whole, we find, not doesn't meet the the criteria for potential designation so we want to remove the district however for these six individual sites it requires additional study for us to be able to more effectively determine and we will do that as part of our review of the everything on the location that framing makes sense so it's like okay we've narrowed the scope of of the additional review to these six sites and then should we determine that they're not you know

candidates to move forward, then they will be removed from the Atlas in the future. OK. Thanks. Any other? We need to wrap this up quickly. Just one more thing. Oh, go ahead.

Just one more thing, fast. I just know that, just based on my own preference, when we put a property on the designation, it limits the number of people that would be interested in purchasing that house. Some people may give preference. Some people may give non-preference. Because for whatever people vision that they have, they may not achieve it because there are some restrictions. We all know that, that it creates restriction rightfully so. So it limits the number of interested people into any kind of dealing with that property. So I don't take these kind of things in any way lightly. And I think that it is important that if a property owner doesn't want to be listed, there is taken seriously that if it is really a significance, If it is really something that is a very high significant, I understand. But if something it is that is on the borderline, I would take that one, give it some weight. I think it's important because that's people investment for their life.

I think that is certainly a fair point, just as there are property owners who would not purchase properties that have forest conservation easements on them or other types of environmental covenants or restrictions on their property that have been placed on the property, either with the consent of a previous owner or because there is a significantly identified environmental feature on that property that the public good says should be protected. I can tell you that John and I walked this neighborhood a lot. I can't tell you how many thousands of steps I logged walking this, even after the survey. And we took a very professionally conservative approach looking at the individual properties that we thought warranted staying on the locational atlas as individual sites. As Chair Harris noted, there are a number of larger, nicer Victorian homes that are in the neighborhood that we have not recommended stay on as individual sites. We try to be, again, very, very sharp with our analysis just at this stage of it. So I do appreciate your concern, and what I would respond with is this was our best professional judgment with the info we have right now, and that we will move on this expeditiously.

OK, great. I really appreciate the board's questions, the detailed questions, because this matters to people. And I appreciate the staff's knowledge of historic sites and all their hard work. And I would say that they're I know that there are some people that would really value more historic homes, and they really believe in that. So we will continue to move forward with this, and you will continue with your analysis as we go. So thank you so much. Is there a motion to, one, find that the Woodside Locational Atlas District does not satisfy the designation criteria outlined in the Historic Resources Preservation, Montgomery County Code, Two, to remove the Woodside Locational Atlas District from the Locational Atlas and Index of Historic Sites. And three, list six resources as noted from the Woodside Locational Atlas District as individual Locational Atlas sites for future evaluation for potential designation in the Master Plan of Historic Preservation.

I'll move to find that the Woodside District does not satisfy the criteria to remove it from the locational atlas and to list the six resources individually. Second.

All in favor? Aye. I abstain. Okay. 4-0-1. Thank you so much. We're going to take a four-minute break, five-minute break, let's say this, and then start with our next item, which is the... Item number nine, subdivision regulation amendment, SRA 2601, subdivision of land, continuation of roads. My staff is recommending that the planning board transmit comments to the district council against the SRA. Thank you. Welcome, everyone. We're on item number nine, subdivision regulation amendment SRA 2601, subdivision of land continuation of roads, where staff is recommending that the planning board transmit comments to the district council against the SRA. And this afternoon, we have Ben Berber presenting this item. Welcome, Mr. Berber.

Thank you for the introduction, Chairman. My name is Benjamin Burbert, for the record, with the Design, Placemaking, and Policy Division. And as said, I will be presenting staff's recommendations on subdivision regulation Amendment 2601. As you've already said, we are recommending the Planning Board transmit comments to the District Council that would oppose SRA 2601. We'll get into a little more detail, but for the general reasons that it goes against academic research best practices on transportation policy, goes against our master and sector functional plans, and just otherwise goes against the connectivity that we are seeking as planners. As a bit of an overview, this item was introduced by the council on April 14, 2026 by Councilmember Mink, and there is a council public hearing that is scheduled for June 9, 2026. What the Chapter 50, our subdivision regulations currently do under Section 54.3e, Roads, it requires that a subdivision plan provide for the continuation of any existing road unless otherwise determined by the planning board in consultation with the appropriate outside agencies, namely MCDOT. What SRA 2601 would do is add an exemption clause that would prohibit the board from making such connections if the road is a neighborhood road or a neighborhood yield street and is located within a local area transportation improvement program area, otherwise known as a LIHTIP. We have one of those in the county, and it is the greater White Oak area, and it was established in 2014 as part of the White Oak Science Gateway Master Plan. This is an area that is a little bit unique from some of our other transportation policy areas, and that rather than having applications for development do a traffic study to look at impacts, instead there is a spreadsheet based on land uses and trip generation, and you sort of pay a per project basis to the county based on those trips. That was done in part because there was major transportation infrastructure improvements that were deemed necessary for this plan area, and this was the way of trying to advance some of those. Again, getting into some of the stuff, and this is really a summary of what's in the staff report. We looked at what is the recommendations out there for transportation connectivity, kind of in a way to show that we don't think we're the crazy ones here in recommending connectivity in our master plans. There is a lot of peer-reviewed research out there. We cited some of the ones that we've relied on in the past in making recommendations. Again, the general consensus is that it improves mobility options for all users, connectivity reduces emergency response time, it reduces regional congestion, it reduces overall vehicle miles traveled, increases transportation mode alternatives, and there are better safety outcomes for all users with more street connectivity. Getting specific to some of the master and functional plan recommendations, Thrive Montgomery 2050 has a lot of recommendations, both talking about existing conditions lacking in connectivity and our desire to get more of them. Again, the absence of a street grid connection makes our transportation network less adaptable and resilient. By expanding street grids in downtowns, town centers, transit corridors, and suburban centers of activity, creating shorter blocks, recommendation to create more connected street grids is perhaps the single most important step to make our streets safer and more attractive for walking, biking, and rolling. And the definition of town center, which this area has numerous ones included in, is that a street grid that ties into the surrounding streets. And then specific to the 2014 White Oak Science Gateway Master Plan, under sort of the existing conditions analysis, it noted that there are many streets that wind through residential neighborhoods, with few through streets to interconnect communities, forcing local traffic onto major roads. Planning staff has heard some concern from the Hillandale community. Generally, we're talking about west of New Hampshire Avenue and just north of the Beltway here that is supporting the SRA as it's been introduced. The concerns that we've heard really relate to a development potential that is adjacent to that particular community and that their community is mostly made up of existing neighborhood and neighborhood yield streets. and that any additional traffic that would be presented onto those streets as a result of new adjacent development would both be unsafe and out of character for their community. Concern was raised about the LATIP and how there is no formal traffic study that's done to assess transportation safety and adequacy that would potentially lead to mitigations for their concerns. And that a large portion of the adjacent community, due to topographic and environmental concerns, may only have one access to and from the site, and it's through their community. Again, staff thinks it's a little premature to really talk about some of this. We don't have a development application in front of us that's proposed anything. But we do understand the concerns that they have raised, and we don't want to diminish them. we're really worried about the precedent that something like this might set on the greater county policy and still for that reason recommend against this. And so again, staff's high level recommendation is that the board not support this SRA. If the board wants to find a way to have an alternative recommendation to either not support but provide alternatives or support an amended version. We have one recommendation on our staff report that would say that any new development on a property located within the boundary of the LATIP must not only connect to an existing neighborhood street or yield street. The purpose of this recommendation is that if we were to have new development on an adjacent site, We would still want street connectivity to the neighborhood, but not as the only means. If there were also an exit point to a higher classification of road, this really gets at what our ultimate goal is, is having better connectivity. This is one recommendation we put out there. There are others that we could talk about if the board so chooses to do that here. But I will say this concludes my part of the presentation.

Could you explain this only, word of only in here? I had a very hard time to understand. I think this only belongs to another part of the sentence. Because what you said is not exactly what this... I'm not saying that English is my second language, but I tried to make sense of what you said, and I had a hard time to understand. But you're basically... explaining that any new development on a property located within the boundary of an LA tip must, shouldn't be the only one connected by an existing, I don't know exactly, could you explain? So maybe you have to explain. Could you explain what this means? I don't understand.

So the concern that staff is trying to address here that was part of what was raised by the community input that we received prior to drafting this recommendation was that there could be a scenario where a development project comes in And it's thinking of it as like completing the end of the cul-de-sac. The only way that that project could have access to the greater transportation network would be through connecting to a neighborhood street or a neighborhood yield street. So by saying that you must not only be connected by those streets, it's implying that you could allow for those street connections So long as there's another exit point that's not on one of those two periods.

Yes. Can we say that way? Because this didn't imply that, what you said. That's what I mean. I understand what you said.

I'm open to wording suggestions on that. Why don't we finish, hear the public testimony, understand a little bit. I do have a question with regards to the presentation.

And Council Member Mink introduced this, correct? And was her intention to make sure that the roads in that community were not connected to the new development that is proposed to go in adjacent or approximate to the community?

I don't want to speak to her intention because it wasn't shared, but that's a presumption that I think we're concerned about when reviewing this.

And so it would prevent the established roads in that community from being connected to the new roads from an adjacent or proximate development, correct?

Correct.

That's what this would do. And this SRA could take the power out of the planning board's hands whether or not the roads should be connected, correct?

Correct. It would set a baseline. And there's no, as it's written, there's no exemption where the board could re-require somehow.

Thank you. OK. So why don't we hear public testimony? We have several. I thought I had my sheet here. Do you have my sheet? No. I would use this. OK.

Yes, I do have this. OK. All right. No, this is mine. I made notes.

All right, so individuals have three minutes. Civic associations have six minutes. So why don't we start? We'll have one, two, three. We'll take six people. Up we'll have Larry Taub, Nancy Stark, Michael Petty, Nancy Dalton, Robin Garner, and Ann Perry. If you can come up, thank you. And you guys can share the mics. When you do your presentation, please state your name first and can go going from there. So we can start with Mr. Taub. Good afternoon.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Chairman Harris, members of the board. For the record, I'm Larry Taub. I live at 909 Crest Park Drive, Silver Spring. I'm a 42-year resident of the West Hillandale neighborhood. We're here today to ask your support of SRA 2601. This amendment arose from a proposal to develop the former Labor College property abutting our neighborhood as a mixed-use development to include 110 townhomes, with traffic from those townhomes to New Hampshire Avenue going solely through Saveria Drive, Royal Road, and Chalmers Road in our neighborhood to a traffic signal at Chalmers and New Hampshire Avenue. These three streets are all neighborhood yield streets. That means they have two-way traffic, there is parking on both sides of the street, and there is only one single travel lane down the middle of those streets. It is over a half a mile from the Labor College boundary to the traffic light at Chalmers in New Hampshire. And the traffic will pass 88 homes to get to that traffic signal. And that does not include homes that come from Cresthaven Drive, which also come from a different direction to use the same signal. This situation is actually unique within Montgomery County in two ways. First, both the Labor College property and the West Hill and Dill neighborhood are located within the lay tip that was discussed by staff that was established through the White Oak master plan. It is the only lay tip within Montgomery County. So with regard to precedent, I would respectfully suggest that it is not going to provide precedent because of that fact. And the second issue is that any developer of property within a LATIP is not required to do a traffic impact analysis, as Steph mentioned. And from my view of the LATIP study, it does not appear that the potential of traffic going through existing residential neighborhoods was ever studied or even anticipated. While we realize that no application has yet been filed, our neighborhood is alarmed that this connection is even being considered. If you could put the first exhibit up for staff. Thank you. Could you go to, let me see. All right, well, let me talk about this. This is from the design guidelines for this master plan. This is a graphic on page 14 showing our neighborhood and the Labor College property. And there is not only no indication of a proposed connection, but instead it shows a transition area to serve as a buffer between the properties. Next exhibit. This is not the design guide. This is from the master plan itself. And this is on page 40 of the master plan in the section for land use and zoning. And this states, and I quote here, I've highlighted that, to ensure that future development is compatible with the existing single family neighborhood along the western and northern edges of the property, the existing tree buffer should be preserved to the extent feasible, and attention should be paid to appropriate housing types and related land planning efforts. And the last exhibit. And this is now from page 74 of the master plan. States retain existing trees that serve as a buffer to surrounding single-family communities. no ability to go ahead. And the master plan is very clear. And with respect, we disagree with the staff. This is not consistent with the master plan. The master plan suggests that we should have a buffer between the communities, not a connection. And with only the neighborhood yield streets, it would be a parade of cars going down every peak hour.

Yeah, Mr. Taub, could you wind up your presentation?

That would be my presentation. I would say that's where I'll let it go with that. But thank you very much. Thank you for your time. Happy to answer your questions.

Thank you, Mr. Tom. The next is Nancy Stark.

Can I ask you to please bring up the original graphic? OK, thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Nancy Stark. I'm president of the Hellendale Citizens Association, a community association representing approximately 1,400 households on both sides of New Hampshire Avenue, north of the Capitol Beltway.

Could you hold on a second to your presentation? There was a picture you wanted to show.

Yes, I believe it was the map that you have up there where you can see the red and the green. I apologize. I didn't press the button. Do I need to restart?

Please restart. Please restart.

Okay. Good afternoon. My name is still Nancy Stark, president of the Hillandale Citizens Association, a community association representing approximately 1,400 households on both sides of New Hampshire Avenue north of the Capitol Beltway. I have been authorized by the HCA Board of Directors to speak on its behalf in support of SRA 2601. My husband and I purchased our home on La Grande Road in West Hillandale in spring 1985. Since that time, we've raised two children, nurtured two dogs, and improved our 1960s home in numerous ways. What drew us to Hillandale were the hundreds of trees, the diversity of residents, economically and ethnically, and the neighborhood feel. We are still here 41 years later for the same reasons. With the exception of Schindler Drive and Cresthaven Drive, Hillandale is a community of neighborhood yield streets with avid walkers, runners, and strollers. These small streets serve as a natural traffic calming measure. And because they are narrow streets, it's easier to get to know our neighbors, which helps to build and sustain community. Please take a look at the graphic we provided to the planning board. It comes from the MC Atlas. The graphic shows that traffic emerging from any development of the former Labor College property would negatively impact the streets of West Hillandale. It would completely overwhelm Royal Road, Xavier Drive, and Chalmers Road, the three neighborhood yield streets marked in green. These are the most direct routes out to New Hampshire Avenue from the Labor College property. But increased traffic would also impact several alternative routes out of the neighborhood onto New Hampshire Avenue, the streets marked in red. I live on one of those streets. 33 years ago, the county installed speed humps on LeGrand Road to slow down the drivers racing to Schindler Drive and onto New Hampshire Avenue. I can't imagine what would happen if additional traffic overflowed onto our small street. Please note that Cresthaven Elementary School and Key Middle School are located on these same streets. The elementary school sits on Cresthaven Drive, and Key Middle School is located on Schindler Drive. As a result, these West Hillandale streets are busy with school buses, parental drop-offs, and children walking to and from school. The ride on bus number 22 also travels these routes. I wish to point out a few additional hazards. We can reasonably assume that most traffic coming from the Labor College property down Royal Road will use Cresthaven Drive or Chalmers Drive to turn onto New Hampshire Avenue. The intersection of Cresthaven and New Hampshire Avenue has terrible line of sight, including for drivers turning right onto New Hampshire Avenue South. Left turns are prohibited from this intersection except at specific times. And anyone making a left onto New Hampshire Avenue North is taking their life in their hands. presents other problems. Chalmers is a tiny street with just seven houses, and it directly faces the Hillendale Volunteer Fire Department. Whenever emergency vehicles emerge from the fire department, which happens quite frequently, the light at Chalmers in New Hampshire turns red and cars pile up. Please, that many of my West Hillandale neighbors are here today to show their support for SRA 2601. And can I ask that all of those who are my neighbors would stand up, please?

Thank you.

Had this hearing, I wish to point out that had this hearing been scheduled for evening time, this room would be packed. That is because West Hillandale is home to people of diverse income levels, including many people who cannot leave work in the middle of the day to attend a hearing. Understand that Montgomery County aims to encourage connectivity between communities. That's a worthy goal. But the Hildendale Citizens Association opposes a policy that would cut down decade-old trees, overwhelm small streets with dramatically increased traffic, and make our neighborhood less safe for families. Thank you.

Thank you.

This is Michael Petty.

Hi, good afternoon. Am I on? I think I'm on. So my name is Michael Petty. I live adjacent to Hillandale. My comments are brief because they've been eloquently expressed by my colleagues. I'm particularly concerned with the issue of traffic that goes through from Lockwood to New Hampshire, which is already quite high, and this would just exacerbate that whole situation. Thank you.

Next is Nancy Dalton.

Hello. I am Nancy Dalton, and I live on Zaveria. And Zaveria is a very short street that would be now used as a through street. It's also a neighborhood yield street. And I have been there for 38 years. And when we first moved in there, there weren't as many cars on either sides of the street, but now there are many, many that it You always have to wait if a car is coming up or down that street. Because there's a curve in the street, it's very hard to see that a car is coming up. And so that makes it hazardous, and you have to wait for that. I live on the cul-de-sac part of Zaveria. And school buses come up. Garbage trucks come up. Big trucks come up. And they have to literally turn around in the middle of the street to exit back down Zaveria. Now, if there was a through street, you say they could go through there. But buses are going to go pick up more children. Garbage and recycle trucks are going to go finish the work they have in the neighborhood. So that is a big concern of mine. There are no sidewalks on Zaveria. So if there's cars on both sides and a continual line of traffic coming down, I would find that that would be not a safe way to travel down that street, either being a runner, a walker, kids on bikes, many many ways that I think that would be hazardous. At the bottom of Severia, where it crosses Royal, I think that would be an intersection that would be a constant traffic jam. And then people would go up to Noon. And then that's where all these other roads that connect would be affected. And they're all the neighborhood yield streets. Nancy Stark talked about the light at Chalmers. I have been waiting at that light for many years, just being patient. But when the school of Cresthaven lets out, there is a line of traffic that goes all the way back up to Cresthaven. The light at Chalmers is connected to Royal. Royal is connected to Cresthaven. And it can go all the way back to about where the school is located, if you've ever seen that. And then if a fire engine comes out, the cycle is, is negated and you wait another cycle and the line gets longer. So having additional traffic in that area is hard to understand. I think that when it was talked about safety and biking and walkers and runners, I just can't understand why more traffic would make that a safer way to traverse our neighborhood. I don't know if that's my time up, but thank you very much.

Thank you so much, Robin Gardner.

Hi, my name is Robin Garner, and I live at 1220 Cresthaven Drive, Silver Spring, Maryland, in the community of Hillandale. I've lived at this address for 39 years. Hillandale was developed in the 1950s when individual builders built one to a couple of houses. The trees were left on the property and houses built around them. We have a large population of walkers, joggers, dog walkers, and some children still walk to school. It was not built to support the traffic needs of today. If it were, there would be no front yards facing New Hampshire Avenue. The increase over the years of multi-generational homes, group homes, and rentals has also affected the traffic with currently more than one or two cars per home. West Haven Drive and Schindler Drive, all streets in the neighborhood are neighborhood yield streets, one lane only with parking on each side. Even on Cresthaven and Schindler, there is parking on each side. And with cars getting wider all the time and the number of cars parked on the street, there is barely two lanes at some places. Both of these streets have schools on them, which also negatively impacts traffic in the morning and afternoons. four stop signs have been added to try and help with the increase in traffic. The addition of vehicles from 110 townhomes, possibly 220 vehicles or more, would severely negatively impact our community. A potential developer stated in a presentation that a solution exists that would not send traffic through our neighborhood, but would cost them more money. I believe that extra money would be well spent versus the alternative of abusing our community as a drive-through. Before you decide, please make sure you visit Hillandale and see for yourself how devastating the addition of so many more vehicles will be to our community. I request the planning board favor and pass this bill, SRA 26-01, to prevent the possibility that any entity could use our neighborhood as a traffic pass-through.

Thank you so much, Sue. And then Ann Perry.

Good afternoon. My name is Ann Perry. In 2016, my husband and I moved to 10200 Lariston Lane at the corner of Lariston and Balmoral Drive. Lariston Lane is in close proximity to Royal Road and provides one workaround when there are traffic issues on Royal. And right now, traffic on Lariston and Balmoral is mostly limited to people who are going somewhere on either street. There is very little through traffic except for our delivery vehicles. And it's so quiet that for decades, my neighbors have closed down Lariston for an annual block party. However, there is heavy pedestrian traffic every day from early morning through the evening, There are runners. There are kids going to school. There are dog walkers. There are people on scooters and bikes. There are parents with their kids in their strollers. There are some people who put their pets in strollers. There are neighbors with their canes and their walking sticks. And they're all on the road, and we don't have sidewalks. So as others here have noted, extending Royal and Saveria to access development at the former labor college site would profoundly disrupt traffic flows in West Hillandale. And this would threaten the safety of both pedestrians and drivers on Lariston and Balmoral. We are highly concerned about drivers looking for a workaround to Royal, who would greatly increase traffic on Lariston and elsewhere in the neighborhood. We are highly concerned about an increased volume of traffic near Cresthaven Elementary School and near Francis Scott Key Middle School, particularly during arrival and dismissal times when students and parents are walking on streets, again, with no sidewalks. We are highly concerned that there's going to be more traffic during rush hours, adding to the already overloaded New Hampshire Powder Mill 495 interchange. And just important from a safety standpoint, as others have pointed, the visibility at the intersection of Cresthaven and Chalmers in New Hampshire is extremely poor and dangerous. And it would be irresponsible from the Montgomery County to approve development that increases traffic at this intersection without first conducting a traffic safety study. But the current laytip structure would permit exactly this scenario by allowing developers to pay a fee in lieu of an assessment. This fee would not in any way address the traffic issue and, in fact, creates an alternative that would exacerbate this very dangerous safety hazard. For these reasons, I strongly urge Montgomery County Planning Board to support the passage of SRA 2601 This will protect the quality of life and the safety of pedestrians and drivers throughout West Hillandale. Thank you.

Thank you so much. We'll take our next group. Jeannie Mizani, Judith Rawson, Vernon Hood, Margaret, Gorgan Rude, and Milton Chappell. And also Matthew Gordon. And if maybe you could pull up a chair so we don't have to, well, why don't we do that? We have Jeff Gessner. Is Jeff here? Why don't you just pull up a chair on the end and we'll, because you'll be our last in-person. OK. Next, so we'll start with Jeannie Mizani.

Hi. So for context, this is Royal Road. Then there's Exabria. And this is the proposed development that they want to do of tentatively 110 townhomes. And I live on the very last house of Royal. Yes. But thank you for allowing me to speak today. I just wanted to give that context. So my husband and I have lived on Royal Road for almost 10 years. We live at the very end of Royal Road, the dead end of the street. And one of the reasons we purchased our home was because it felt like a quiet place to eventually raise children. We were drawn to the peaceful nature of the neighborhood and especially to the woods directly beside our home. And those are the same woods where the proposed development would be. And as many have said, Royal Road effectively functions as a one-way yield street or a neighborhood yield street. And that would be the only way that Anyone could even get to the new development if it were to happen. Nearly every single day, when driving through the neighborhood, I pull over multiple times to allow oncoming cars through. And because I live at the very end of Royal Road, I experience the full length of this traffic pattern every day. This is not an occasional inconvenience. This is a reality of living on the street. I also think it's important to ask, what kind of experience are future residents being brought into? The proposed development would sit at the very end of the street, and this is the only street to get to the said development, meaning those future residents would experience the worst traffic bottlenecks of anyone in the neighborhood, like myself. Even now, basic neighborhood function or routines create major congestion. On trash and recycling days, if you get stuck behind the trash truck, you are trapped behind it until there's enough space to maneuver around. During morning rush hour, it can take multiple cycles of the traffic light just to get onto New Hampshire. There are also safety concerns. Because Royal Road functions as this one-way yield street, my understanding is that speed bumps can't be installed. And also, there are no opportunities for stop signs on the long stretch of road. That means there are limited tools available to control speeding on what is already a long and heavily constrained street. So in summary, we ask that you consider our recommendation to alleviate a neighborhood that is already overburdened with increased congestion and prevent fundamentally changing the character of a neighborhood that so many of us call home. Thank you.

Thank you for your presentation. Next is Judith Rawson.

Not used to microphones. I was a teacher for 37 years, and we had to rely on our voice. My husband and I have lived on Royal Road for almost 40 years, and we're appalled at the prospect of opening a road from the Labor College property into our community. We bought our house because of the mature trees, the community feel to the neighborhood, like many people have expressed here. I'm going to skip over a lot of the things that I had written down because they have already been said, but a few things that have not been mentioned. The issue at the traffic light at New Hampshire and Chalmers with the firehouse has been described. But there is also an issue for anyone coming south on New Hampshire who wants to turn onto Chalmers. There is for maybe one car to turn in if there are cars parked on both sides and traffic is backed up waiting to get through the light out onto New Hampshire, which means that you sometimes have to stop on New Hampshire, a 40 mile an hour road, and just sit there and wait, hoping nobody rear ends you. Hundreds more cars possibly coming in from outside the neighborhood. We foresee an increase in traffic congestion, noise, pollution, and safety issues for pedestrians, children who are playing in their front yards or walking to school, and unfortunately for the wildlife that comes up from the Northwest Branch, the deer that we enjoy unless they eat our hostas. Right now, there are two deer who are frequenting two does with three fawns who are visiting my yard on a daily basis. They'll be out in the streets soon. When the congestion gets bad enough, cars will spread out into other neighborhood streets to find their way out. One last point that Larry made earlier, no project has yet been approved for the labor college site, but it makes sense to resolve this matter now that we've become aware of it before we're down to the wire with a pending development plan trying to defend our community from the damage it's bound to suffer.

Thank you so much for your testimony. Next is Vernon Rood.

My name is Vernon Paul Rood. I live at 10508 Royal Road in Silver Spring. I am here to speak in favor of SRA 2601. Our Hillandale neighborhood faces a momentous question about the future quality of life there. This question revolves around whether there will be a wise or foolish development of the 44-acre space now occupied by the labor college. The chief topographical feature of this otherwise flat parcel of suburban land is a north-south stream bed that bisects this land into eastern and western parts. This stream bed lies at the southern end of Royal Road and carries stormwater and meltwater out of the neighborhood. Most of these 44 acres lie east of the stream bed and can be easily built up and connected to nearby New Hampshire Avenue. The problem lies in the five acres or so of this land, which lie west of the stream bed. One developer has proposed building 110 or so townhouses on this land. However, this raises the vital question of how people access these houses. The logical solution would be to build a bridge across the stream bed, which would provide the shortest, most direct, and most easily accessible route. After all, these townhouses will lie within sight and within hailing distance of the houses and stores envisioned for the other side of the stream bed that are close to New Hampshire Avenue. Unfortunately, the developer who proposed to build this townhouse complex refused to pay for a bridge across a stream bed. The bridge would have cost about $5 million as against total development worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Instead, he proposed sending the townhouses 100 to 200 vehicles north for a half mile along a narrow residential street that was not built to handle it. This would in turn create two major permanent problems for the neighborhood. One, traffic congestion would gridlock this narrow half-mile-long residential street every rush hour, morning and evening, for the foreseeable future. It would be a permanent blight on the neighborhood. And two, the new townhouses would be cursed at birth by their unfavorable location at the end of a hard-to-access, one-half-mile-long cul-de-sac. Emergency vehicles would find it hard to access this cul-de-sac. These homes, so routinely hard to access, would not rise in value and remain as permanently undesirable houses. This undesirable housing would blight the lives of the people who live there permanently. Please pass SRA 2601.

Thank you, sir. Next is Margaret Gorgenrud.

Margie Gorgian-Rood, you got it. Nobody gets it. Hi, I'm Margie Gorgian-Rood. I live at 10508 Royal Road, Silver Spring. First, I want to thank the board, the planning board, for having this public meeting. And it's very important to hear from these Hillandale citizens. As a homeowner, I have been in Hillandale community for 19 years. And I've been very actively involved in the community, especially in the Hillandale Citizens Association all those 19 years. I've learned what a very special place Hillandale is. There's diversity, neighborliness, and advocacy of this area is very longstanding and result-oriented. In many of these communities in Montgomery County, we have our problems, and you have heard many of them already today from our neighbors. But my house sits at the intersection of Chalmers and Royal Road. I have a sun porch office with its wide windows that gives me a panoramic view of the intersection. I love seeing folks walking their dogs, kids going and coming from school, or perhaps the neighborhood pool, and families on evening strolls. But then there is the traffic. And I'm going to offer something to this entire board and all the administrative staff. If you would be so kind as to talk to me afterwards, you can come and watch what it's like from what I see in my windows from 7 to 9 a.m. and also from 3.30 to 5.30 with the traffic backed up on Chalmers all the way down Royal and then also up Royal to Cresthaven Avenue. This is school buses, ride-on buses, work vehicles, and there are vehicles parked on both sides of Chalmers, and it becomes a major bottleneck with the only access to New Hampshire Avenue. Now, just picture this. This is a neighborhood yield street. And these extra townhouses, 110, would have the only direct access to New Hampshire Avenue on Royal Road and Chalmers. You have a traffic nightmare. Please. help prevent this potential traffic nightmare from acerbating any already busy neighborhood street. Please approve and say yes to SRA 2601. Thank you.

Thank you. Next is Milton Chappell.

Thank you. I'm Milton Chappell, and I live on Royal Road, like most of us that are speaking right now. I moved in almost 50 years ago. I bought from the original owner and builder of my house. And obviously, like everyone that spoke before me, we love our community. We watched it continue to grow, to be diverse. to be, but it's kept its same community that I've lived in for almost 50 years. But we have had bigger traffic, more cars, and the highway cannot take any more. And the main highway is Royal. There's some other streets that are workarounds, but this traffic will come through Royal. And this bill, this proposal, is needed to keep our community the way it is. It will totally destroy our community with this added traffic. On Royal Road right now, we have about 63 houses. There's about seven houses or so on Chalmers, which is the way out to New Hampshire. And adding 110 or even another 60 houses would just double or triple the type of mess that we already have there and would totally change our neighborhood. And what makes this so bad and why this bill is needed is that making this the only way out of a new planned community that would double or triple the size of the cars and the people on this highway is needed to preserve our community and our beautiful area. There is another way out, as some of the other speakers have alluded to, that makes much more sense for the redevelopment of this labor campus, which would be the extension onto Powder Mill. It's much closer to New Hampshire. As they have said, from this new development, you would go 0.6 or 0.7 tenths of a mile to get out to Chalmers, and then go another 0.7, so like a mile and a half to get to the Beltway, when you could go directly out in probably 2 tenths of a mile, 3 tenths at most. And clearly, We cannot have this being the only way out. And so I want this bill passed. But if you're not going to pass this bill, the alternative suggested must be passed that would never allow new development that would use Royal Road or our community as the only egress. Thank you for allowing me to speak.

Thank you so much.

And next is Matthew Gordon. Good afternoon, Chair Harris and Planning Board Commissioners. Matthew Gordon from the law firm of Selzer-Gervich testifying on behalf of the contract purchaser of the former National Labor College site. It's now sometimes referred to as the ATU site for the Amalgamated Transit Union, also known as the Tommy Douglas Conference Center. I am going to express a different position, so I'm probably not going to make a lot of new friends today, but that's OK. The testimony I'm providing is to supplement a letter that was submitted by the contract purchaser, my client, I believe earlier today, that we'll transmit to the council as well. We agree with the staff. We believe that the subdivision regulation amendment is inconsistent with established county policies and will set a bad precedent. The policy of having roadways to enhance connectivity and better circulation is something that's done with every development. And in summary, I mean, we think that it's premature to try to do this from a legislative perspective. This is something that gets addressed in the development review process. And I can touch on that and explain as I go through my testimony. The site is split zoned. The more intense portion of the site is the portion that's closer to New Hampshire Avenue. That portion is zoned for up to a 1.5 FAR. And then I think the portion that you've heard a lot of testimony on which is the western portion of the site, is zoned for a 0.25 FAR. The master plan recommends a mix of uses in public open spaces and enhanced pedestrian connections. While WRS is still in the early stages of defining their development plan, and there will be community meetings and a lot of steps in the process, they are currently contemplating that the more intensely developed portion of the site closer to New Hampshire could accommodate a mix of retail uses and for sale and rental housing. The western portion of the site that is across the stream in the floodplain, or a portion of it's in the floodplain, they are contemplating for neighborhood-scaled residential, ideally townhouse-type units that will be compatible and appropriate with the neighboring community. Both the master plan and zoning recommendations support residential uses on the western portion of the site with a layout that would be appropriate. It is likely that the only viable access to the residential units on this portion of the site will require some access through one or several of the residential streets that dead end into the site today because of uncertainties and unknown environmental features with the stream in terms of whether it will be viable to actually cross from the western portion of the site to the eastern portion of the site. The one thing that I do want to point out that there's been testimony about this portion of the county being different from other portions of the county because it's in the LATEP, I would beg to differ that there's a material difference in the regulatory process. It is correct that you pay a fee, but the Department of Transportation, State Highway, Park and Planning, Transportation, they still have the authority to review site access. If you look at the LATIP, this is paraphrasing or maybe verbatim, It states that developments are still required to evaluate site frontage and access points for any necessary treatments and mitigate as necessary. So through the development review process, DOT, transportation planning staff, and others are within their rights to ask an applicant to perform an operational analysis, a queuing analysis, things of these nature. But without having the benefit of a development plan in front of this board today, there's no way to really understand what may be appropriate for this site, how the access would work, and things of that nature. That all happens through the development review process. But if this subdivision regulation amendment is approved, even with the alternative, you may preclude additional residential uses on this portion of the site altogether. There may not even be an opportunity for that. which, whether that's lawful or not, I would argue it's not because you can't deny a property owner access under state law and other established principles. But the main point is that there needs to be an opportunity to actually review a plan and figure out what is appropriate for the site. And that's what your staff and the Development Review Committee agencies are trained and are very capable of doing and working through with an applicant taking input from stakeholders like all those that have testified today and that process will unfold but to go ahead and just establish this rule for this one part of the county and nowhere else in the county that you cannot connect to a residential street it's just incorrect and inconsistent with everything that this board has been doing for the past five years or so and the council all the policies that have been established to try to grow our housing base our commercial tax base, everything else that we need to be doing. And in closing, I would also note that there has been very little development in this part of the county. So if you want to discourage development even further, then this policy would be a good way to do that. But I don't think that that's anybody's goal, at least in this room. With that, we respectfully request that the planning board accept the staff recommendation and do not support this subdivision regulation amendment, because it will be consistent with the master plan vision and other goals, and preclude important residential uses on the site. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, Jeff Gessner.

Thank you. I could not disagree more with the last comments by counsel for the developer. Planning staff made the point that this area is unique. This legislation is a narrow solution to a unique area and would be non-precedential. I think that's very important. My name is Jeff Genzer. I live at 10319 Royal Road, and I have since 1990. I support the legislation. And I want to thank Councilwoman Mink for introducing the legislation. You've heard from Larry Taub, Nancy Stark, all our neighbors about the importance of this and the importance of the neighborhood and its existing character. As evidenced by the community interest exhibited today, this proposal is a creative solution to a problem that frankly should not exist and is being created by the developer. My late wife and I chose this neighborhood for a few critical reasons. If you looked at the map that Nancy Stark posted, You have parallel streets. You have Cresthaven Elementary School. You have Key Middle School. You have a rescue squad fire department in a narrow area where Cresthaven and Chalmers meet New Hampshire. It would be the neighborhood. The community is economically, ethnically, and racially diverse, and that has always been a key strength. When I heard about the development, I called Patrick Marr, and I think this is counsel to Mr. Marr and the company, WRS. He specifically told me in a phone call that the planning staff told him to go on Royal and Zaveria. When the planning staff came to visit with the neighborhood, they certainly denied that on April 2, 2025. Mr. Marr, his client, in a phone call on July 26, 2024, told me that he had a solution to the traffic. His idea would be to take 23 more feet off of the front lawns of everyone on Zaveria and Royal, and that would take care of our traffic problem. That was not hearsay. That is specific language that his client told me by phone. They have not yet filed it. I recognize that. But this legislation is a positive step. And without it, I think you would be destroying the neighborhood health, safety, and environmentally. And I think there is an alternative. There is the access through the development site on New Hampshire at Powder Mill. And that would be the smartest move that the planning board could make. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, we have on Teams virtually Leslie Harris, Eric Patmore, and Sue Present. So we'll start with Leslie Harris. You have three minutes.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Okay. Hi, I'm Leslie Harris. I am a resident of Halendale for 19 years. I'm a mother of three kids, ages 17, 15, and 6. And I live at Royal Road, very close to the corner of Zaveria. Um, I want to say that I've never been involved in the board and I don't regularly attend any meetings, but when I found out about what could potentially happen to the neighborhood, I felt compelled to come here today and to speak. Um, as you've heard already, there's already major problems with, um, the state of Royal road. And I wanted you to hear it from a resident perspective of someone who's been there for a long time with kids. Are streets like very overcrowded with cars already? It can be challenging to get through. It can be challenging to get out of the neighborhood, particularly during the commute hours due to tight streets with a lot of cars on it. And When somebody opens the car door, you have to pause. You just can't get through. If there's a garbage truck, you can't get through. The notion that safety... would be improved by extending this road into a potentially other new neighborhood is absolutely false. It would be detrimental to the children, to the walkers, to the drivers, to the bikers, anyone that utilizes these sidewalks and streets because there's not sidewalks everywhere. It would definitely cause problems and safety concerns. The visibility is very low. I often almost get hit backing out of my driveway. My six-year-old almost got hit last week because there's visibility issues. And I'm very much in support of passing SRA 26-01. I think under no circumstance is extending this neighborhood road into another community without them having access to another exit or entry point would not be in anyone's interest. I also want to say that it's very clear to me that there is an access point on Powder Mill Road that could access this community very easily, reducing their commute time, reducing their frustrations. And it makes no sense to enter the neighborhood or even have the potential to do that. So a traffic study is absolutely important. And if they even consider this, but in general, I don't think having this road, like having our neighborhoods secure from additional traffic is vital.

Thank you so much for your testimony. Next is Eric Padmore from the Burnt Mills Civic Association. You will have six minutes, up to six minutes.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And again, my name is Eric Padmore. I live at 711 Edelblut Drive in Burnt Mills Hills. And I'm here to speak in support of SRA 2601. We in Brent Middles Hills have recently undergone what has been about an 18-month process to have traffic calming in the form of speed bumps through our neighborhood to help slow down the traffic which cuts through between Lockwood Drive and New Hampshire Avenue. When we bought this property 17 years ago, we what was then an eight-year-old child who was an avid little bike rider. But despite the bucolic neighbor, our neighborhood was fairly dangerous. Again, because of the nature of the trees, the curved streets, and the traffic that speeds through here at all times.

Mr. Padmore, you're freezing. So maybe you want to turn your camera off and then maybe it'll get better that way.

I want to reiterate what many of our neighbors have already talked about. I want to encourage the council to sort of take it up a thousand feet and rather than focus on the streets immediately adjacent to the proposed development is to look at The area bounded by New Hampshire, Colesville Road, and the Beltway as an ecosystem. An ecosystem where you have grocery stores at White Oak and at Four Corners. You have the Southeast Hebrew Congregation on Lockwood Drive. You have community polls at East Hellendale and Northwest Branch. And all of these things in addition to the schools, are where families and children walk to on foot. And I have a unique perspective on this because my property abuts the backside of Francis Scott Key Middle School. And so what none of the traffic studies are going to show you is that the kids from this area walk through Burnt Mills Hills and get to school the back way by approaching Francis Scott Key from Harper Avenue. There's actually a little path that walks through the woods that gets them to school. So you have a lot of children walking from... Mr. Patmore, can you turn off your camera?

You're freezing, so something's taking up bandwidth. Let me... Mr. Padmore, we didn't hear the last minute. Please turn off your camera because you're freezing a lot and you're popping in and out.

Okay. Is that better? Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Sorry, I don't know where I disconnected there, but what I'm saying essentially is that if you take a broader view of what you will find is that you're not going to see the behavior of the humans in a traffic study. And the humans, particularly the kids who go to Francis Scott Key Middle School use our neighborhood and access that school property through back roads that put them on the back side of the school. In particular, Harper Avenue, which has a cut through to the back of the school. So that means that they're coming off of Lockwood Drive. They're using Burnt Mills Avenue. They're coming through Gatewood Avenue on foot. And in many cases, walking down the middle of the street, as are tomorrow night, members of the Southeast Hebrew congregation who access their temple on foot through our neighborhood. And so it becomes very important to take a broader look. at what happens with foot traffic through these neighborhoods, which were designed to be walking neighborhoods. On Sunday mornings, families on bikes with strollers all treat this area as their personal fitness, walking their dogs and what have you. And so I think the other thing that has not been articulated here is when you provide those street connections, we all have a common enemy, and that enemy is a little app by the name of Waze. So we live in proximity to the great beast that is 495, the Beltway. And when things go wrong on the Beltway, traffic from New Hampshire, from Colesville Road, are all looking for ways to make workarounds. And that little app sends them through our neighborhood in droves. So everything that you've heard so far this morning, or this afternoon rather, is true, but it's also...

Okay, I think that's good. All right, so why don't we go to our next person, Sue Present.

...imagine very frequently.

Yes, yes, Ms. President. It's your turn.

Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm speaking in support of SRA 2601. The staff report, which recommends opposing this amendment based on street connectivity best practices, overlooks a regulatory inequity that is unique to the White Oak Science Gateway. The WASC plan area is the only place in the county with a lay tip and only place where developers are exempt from project-specific ladder requirements. Because development of the former labor college property is exempt from these ladder requirements, that development could be approved and the dead-end roads that abut the property opened to cut through traffic without the impact study that would otherwise alert officials to the resulting traffic impacts on neighborhood roads. In other areas that are exempt from project-specific ladder, such as metro station policy areas, which also emphasize connectivity, long-established dead-end streets have been left as motor vehicle termini to protect single-family edges. With those protections removed under LATIP, SRA 2601 is needed to restore a comparable level of review and safety. The staff report refers to our decades-old dead ends as stub roads, but that label does not reflect the physical reality on the ground. These streets, planted in 1958, were built without turnarounds and have functioned for generations as quiet residential termini. Their geometry, width, and sight lines are characteristic of low-volume, neighborhood-yield streets, not through connections designed to absorb commuter traffic. Forcing a full vehicular connection now would impose volumes that these streets were simply never decided to handle. If you're not inclined to support the SRA's full prohibition on extending these streets, then I urge you to consider a multimodal and emergency access solution. Multimodal components align with Thrive's connectivity goals, and operational emergency access needs could be met through restricted emergency-only designs. This approach respects the physical limits of established residential streets while still providing the connectivity that Thrive envisions. There are clear precedents where, in similar circumstances, streets in the county have been kept closed to vehicular traffic with multimodal solutions, and DPS has approved emergency-only extensions that allow fire apparatus access. opening full vehicular roads through long-established dead ends without any project-specific traffic study would impose an unfair and unexamined burden on WASC neighborhoods, including mine, West Hillandale. I ask that you seek a middle ground. I urge you to recommend an amendment requiring that any continuation of neighborhood streets or neighborhood yield streets within the LATIC boundary be limited to pedestrian, bicycle, and emergency vehicle-only infrastructure, an approach that achieves connectivity goals without sacrificing safety or the physical limits of our streets? Thank you.

Thank you so much. I believe that's all we have. I really, really appreciate all of you coming out. It's always important to hear. get feedback from the community, because it is your community. So this is what I'd like to do. Big picture, my personal opinion is that this seems like this SRA was written for a specific project. I didn't know it was ideally. I understand your concerns. We do not want traffic to overburden the community. But ideally, but it's not ideally, but ideally, we would like to evaluate it in perspective of the project, right? But and not just in general. So is there, there's no project in front of us, correct? I mean, and it looks like this is going to be a, I don't know if it's going to be a two-phase project. You know, like there's, I understand that there's more of a mixed-use project that, you know, this is a 44-acre site. I don't even know the limits of this. I have But it's bifurcated by, is it a stream? And then there's going to be a more mixed use intensive part on the east side, a less intensive part on the west side. It would be great if when we look at this whole thing, how does it all fit together? But that's not the case. And so generally, I would not like to, if this is really for a certain project, it would be nice to see what is the project. And that's why my preference would be to deny this. Ideally, I'm sure that if the project came through, given what you said, it probably would need to have multiple points of access. And we do, as staff said. It's great to have streets that connect for all the reasons They said, so we've got this dilemma here of trying to evaluate this based on there's some projects coming up that I don't know about. And it'd be nice to know what that project is and how it fits in. And that's how we normally do. And ideally, what we'd have done, even if we didn't see the whole project and the developer was concerned about access points, I think in the past we'd had something where it was a pre-preliminary plan. I think, what have we come in before? concept plan or whatever? I remember we had a couple of plans before we just, if just they wanted to figure out, will I only have one road, two roads, you know, how, at least I thought we did a couple of those before.

That would be, Robert Cronenberg for the record, so that would be a pre-preliminary plan where an applicant could come in and ask for binding advice and get that kind of feedback from the board regarding a particular issue that they've brought to our attention, whether that's access or master plan. conformance or something else that might be part of the application.

And at that time, did it go to DRC and they have people, the transportation reviews it, all the agencies review it, and then it would also, the community would also have opportunity to provide, I mean, I'm just trying to remember.

It goes through the same development review process that all the other applications go through, and it does come to the board. if they're asking for that kind of advice. So, yes, it goes through the same process that all the other applications do.

And in a concept plan, how would that be different?

So the difference with the concept plan is it stops at our development review committee meeting. So it's not binding, but it provides staff an opportunity to raise any kind of red flags that would come up as part of the next meeting or the application that they would need to go through, whether that's subdivision, site plan, or sketch plan in some cases for different types of projects.

And would the other agencies also weigh in?

Yes. The other agencies, it goes through an application review process, but it doesn't go beyond the development review committee. So they're getting the feedback and they're getting all the comments to decide whether they want to proceed with that application or not. So that's the biggest difference. And there's no conditions. There's no binding elements. It's really just comment period for the concept plan.

I think the problem is that because this was part of LAT and there was no study, traffic study, and I totally understand your concern. I understand that we don't want to do a ZTA for one project, but we could do a ZTA in general, not for a specific one that we say that If there is no traffic study done to determine the impact on the neighboring community, the reason that the traffic is not done because they have given money to the county, that the county does the work and does the study. Then the county is responsible to do the study to determine the impact of the traffic, if there is any, that probably it is, and how they could mitigate the impact that not to create the issue for the existing community. I totally understand what they're talking about. And that is not just specific to this community. It could be to a lot of other places that we don't do the study. And we don't know what is the impact to the existing communities. And this is something that it needs to be, at one point, it needs to be taken care of. OK, I don't know. You sit here. I guess you want to say something. So help me, please.

For the record, Richard Brockmeyer, transportation planning supervisor over our regulatory group for transportation. I just want to clarify, a traffic study, an LATR study is not required in the LATIP area. There's a fee. MCDOT, SHA do often require an operations analysis to look at access. So I just wanted to clarify that there are opportunities to provide some sort of traffic analysis. whether or not it's in the LATIP area. It's not a requirement. We don't look at the LATR, so we don't look at everything that is incorporated in the LATR. But MCDOT and SHA have requested those kinds of studies in these areas.

So do we have those studies? I didn't understand how specifically that would apply to this Hill and Dell community, because we have this area. And I do not know what is their status. I'm sorry.

We have no application in front of us. We've not been contacted to discuss a specific project, so I can't speak to that. But if and when something is submitted or we're approached by the developer, that may be something that MCDOT or SHA would require at that time.

But you say maybe. That's the thing, that we want to provide some kind of you know, comfort that this study would be done. This is, I could see that this is, you know, a lot of, you know, it's a small tight community there, and we're going to have, you know, a development, and nobody has made any kind of requirement yet to

I'll also mention that we look at access, just overall access, whether or not there's a traffic study that's required. And that would be counts and level of service analysis. But whether or not that's required, when we talk about a development review application, we are considering the site access and the immediate impact.

What does site access mean? Access is access to the site. Or does it include the overcrowding and cut through to the existing community?

We'll consider the context of the site. And this is why I think some of the concern with the SRA is that it doesn't allow this to be sort of a case-by-case basis and analysis of considering the specific project. It's more of a general blanket statement that those roads can't connect. And so we would evaluate, generally speaking, we look for road connectivity. So we would look for opportunities to make road connections, but we're going to take into account things like topography, environmental constraints, input from MCDOT and SHA, input from the community. Those are all evaluated and part of the development review process.

I understand that, but I don't know that if access and project connectivity takes care of the issues and look into congestion, the level of service, the number of traffic. That's what I don't know.

Commissioner, the question is, if this came before the board or if this came before you in a project application, could you request that DOT look at and perform an operational analysis given the concern for the community?

I think we could share the concern with MCDOT. We can't require an operations analysis. Well, we can sometimes ask for an operations analysis if we think that there's something that needs to be reviewed in order for us to make our findings on adequate public facilities or adequate and safe, efficient access. Generally speaking, it would be something that we'd consult with MCDOT and MCDOT would request that analysis.

So can we make as part of this ZTA a requirement?

No, no. But that would be if we had to. So my question, if we deny this SRA, if this project came before staff, could you request MCDOT to do an operational analysis given what you see is concern from the community? and what your general, your professional .

I would just kind of highlight that the process that plays out when a development application comes in really takes a look at the context of that individual application. And so what is being described here and being talked about here, we're talking about, in a way, a hypothetical development application that does not exist today. there could be a thousand hypothetical applications for development all across the county right now. That communities all across the county could be saying, I want protection from X, Y, or Z development that may or may not happen at some point in the future. The point is that when an application actually does come in, that's when it's no longer hypothetical and we have to take a look at questions of access and all of these other concerns And that is part of the process. Whether or not there is a traffic study conducted, we do take a look at access. And it's not just us. It is MCDOT. It is SHA. And when appropriate, they will require those. And we can also request that those be included. Great. Thank you.

Like the other board members, if you have questions or comments.

Yeah, absolutely. The SRSA, to your point, the SRSA seems an inappropriate vehicle for the concerns right now. We don't have a plan. We don't have access. We have no idea what the situation coming before us is, and we retain the tools that we have for site plan, preliminary plan, and sketch plan. design and review of adequate public facilities, which includes traffic. And, you know, we can see the pictures of the Royal Road right there. And if a site plan came before and they said everybody was going to go out on Royal Road, that would be ridiculous. It's not large enough. I just don't think that's already the appropriate way to do it. And it says a lot that we probably shouldn't have a lay tip to begin with sitting here. is probably the way to address the problem so that a little ATR applies countywide and not just for this, but the SRA is inappropriate in this case. And while we're comments or what we're being asked to do is largely provide comments on an SRA proposed by the council, we don't get to decide whether or not this is approved one way or the other. It's an inappropriate vehicle for the issue because we don't have the issue in front of us yet. like our response and our responsibility for this is to review the site plan and review... overall policy related to land use and housing within the county, and this is not the way to go about it. It's kind of an odd situation between the two. I mean, when the site plan comes before us, we can make a determination of connectivity. But right now, this is an inappropriate way to address it, and we'll have a chance to thoroughly examine traffic and access at the time that we may or may not receive an actual plan. I appreciate your comments.

Any other commissions? My comment concerns the meaningful action of Councilmember Meek in addressing the concerns of her constituent community and whether or not this was the only tool available to introduce to effectively address the concerns and preserve that community. And so Councilmember Mink is well intentioned in proposing this. And I know the staff is well intentioned in making sure that the Planning Board and its powers are protected. And when I balance the comments of the community weighed against our learned staff and Councilmember Mink, I'm inclined to favor what Councilmember Mink is trying to do, although it may not be the appropriate method. Thanks.

Vice Chair Linden.

I think in this case, I'm trying to view the SRA on its own terms, which applies in this case to the entire LATIP area, correct? Which means it would potentially apply to other hypothetical development sites. I don't know exactly how many of those sites there may be. But listening to all the comments about how difficult it is to get out of the neighborhood right now and how children use the streets and we don't want more cars to put them at risk, those are all things that I completely empathize with. We all talk about street safety all the time. And I live on a street that is really unsafe. And so I feel that intensely every day. But I think the SRA is misguided for the exact same reason why, just in my opinion, you all experience a lot of challenges, which is that a lack of connectivity really does make it hard to get out of a neighborhood. And, you know, I was just looking at some census data and there are 7,000 people living in the census tract that roughly approximates the area that we're talking about with very few exit points, you know, very few traffic lights to get out. You know, you described having to wait through several traffic cycles to get out on New Hampshire, and it's a real challenge, and I'm not pretending that it's not a challenge. I don't want to create a situation where we're making that worse, and I think that this particular SRA in general is the kind of approach that actually does make traffic worse. I can't speak to this hypothetical project because we don't have this project in front of us, But the SRA is misguided for the same reason that not having access out to New Hampshire directly from the site would be misguided. You know, it's the same issue where if there was something on the site and it didn't connect directly out to New Hampshire, that would be a problem. That would be a problem for the exact same reason why not adding connectivity to the neighborhood would be a problem. And so I don't think that the SRA... Although it's trying to address the challenges that you all either are speaking to today or you're concerned about in the future, I don't think that the SRA makes sense for the whole community. It's, you know, as well-intentioned as it may be. But when it comes to a hypothetical project in the future, you know, we deal, as we've already talked about, staff's talked about, and, you know, Commissioner Hedrick and the chair have talked about, That's where the rubber is going to be the road with dealing with the specific access questions. We don't know what that's going to look like, but I would just say at this moment, although we don't have anything in front of us, having anything on the site that doesn't connect out to New Hampshire directly is a problem. I know it's expensive, but that truly does not make sense for the exact same connectivity challenges that we're talking about with regard to the SRA. So I would strongly encourage whatever future applicant on this hypothetical site to prioritize somehow, some way, connecting out to New Hampshire through Powder Mill. Because without that, we're setting ourselves up for failure. So maybe there's ways that the county... can support that process through various fiscal tools and incentives, and maybe it gets added. I don't know exactly if the lay tip is subject to change with its project list, but maybe something like this gets added to that. Maybe it gets added to the capital program. I don't know. I don't want to presume one path or another, but there needs to be access out to New Hampshire. Looking at this site, that much is abundantly clear to me. The SRA, I can't support.

So I want to say all good thoughts here that, and I would hope that the community sees that this is a board that wants to do the right things in terms of connectivity and you said the right things about ideally this property, this large property should have access out onto part of mill and there are, maybe they're with grants or whatever, whatever. the right thing is to have that access. But going through this SRA is not the right process. When the project comes before the board, we will evaluate this project. Staff will evaluate it, and the board will evaluate it. And this is a board that focuses on connectivity, safety. And so I will leave it with that. But as I said, this is This was driven toward this side, and we want to see the project to come before us so we can truly evaluate it and figure out how to make it work for the community as well.

I'm not done yet.

Please.

I'm not done yet. I have a couple of questions. ...is not the right vehicle, then what is the right vehicle in general? I'm not talking about the specific project, okay? So this is not about this specific project, but it is about when we have LAT or other requirements in areas that we don't do, we just want development with no traffic study And how are we going to mitigate the impact of not doing that study to the existing neighborhoods? So maybe if the SRA is not the right one, maybe it is an LA tip that when we say that they are in another kind of tool, that when there is no traffic study required, how are mitigation to impact of additional traffic to existing neighborhoods would be considered. The other thing is that if we can say, okay, we don't support this SRIA because it's just specific for one project that I agree that it shouldn't be specific to one project, but why can't we We just amended the comment to say that it could, unless that there is another way connection. We say that if it is the existing communities does not have any kind of traffic study, then Before we do the opening up the grid, we do a traffic study to mitigate the impact. So that is in general, and it's not just specific to a project, and it's not saying that don't do it. It just says that mitigate the problem. Why can't we do that?

Well, I mean, that means you'd have to approve the SRA. I think we've already signaled to the developer.

I mean, this is... Well, I'm just asking, why can't we do that? Why can't we revise the comment in SRA that if there is LAT, a traffic study should be done before we connect? Instead of saying that to have a two-way, maybe we should do both. You already put that. And add another comment that a traffic study, because right now he's saying that we're going to recommend to do the traffic, but we cannot make them do it. But this would say that do the traffic and see the impact. Why can't we do that?

So I'm going to let some of the transportation policy experts kind of finish this thought. But I think the concern I would have with that is, These are policy decisions that are set up through the LATR and how we review public facility adequacy, which is not Chapter 50. And so from my own perspective, I really would not want to use Chapter 50 as a mechanism to sort of overrule these other guidelines that we have. And that would be best done through amending those other guidelines to set those parameters.

Yeah, that's fine. I get it. I get it. That's what I said, that that may not be the right tool. I understand your point, but I'm just saying that Council Member Mink used this because I guess they thought that may be the best process. But rather than rejecting it, I think we should say that, well, if you want to achieve that, this is a better tool. that you can use to achieve what you want to achieve. Why don't we do that?

I think what we can put in a transmittal memo is that the board, if the majority of the board agrees that there is a concern, we could suggest that the council explore other alternatives by amending the policies that have created this kind of in the first place. to allow for, and I think we need to be careful, like a general traffic city, I think, goes completely against what the point of the LA TIP was. suggesting specifically the operational studies. Because I think the other thing that's a little bit missed here is a lot of what we got out of these LATR studies is intersection capacity. And that is something that was raised, that there is a potential intersection capacity issue. But they look a little bit less at how the road's designed and the throughput of the segments. It's more of a node-based analysis, particularly in the more suburban areas of the county. And so I think it's really the operational analysis that is probably what is what we're actually after here. And so I think we can recommend in our transmittal that we would like to see changes to help address that in situations where there is a connectivity concern. And again, the other problem, I think, by opening this up countywide is it we really have no idea what the impacts become. Like, if it's a six-lot subdivision, do they have to follow the same standards as a 150-lot subdivision?

I don't know. But the point is that this is my concern. If we deny this, we are actually, I totally agree with what, you know, Commissioner Linden said. It has to have connection to Georgia Avenue, okay? It just, that makes sense. But if we not support and deny this, that would allow the developer, help the developer not to make that connection.

Well, we can, I mean, we're going to see any potential, we're going to see any potential preliminary sketch or site plan, at which point we can say no, and we can include binding requirements that we not do those things that we know. This is spot zoning for traffic is what it is. And it's a bad way to do it, and it's a bad precedent.

Yes, yes. But the idea is that there is concern, and we are saying that, okay, we're going to take care of your concern in future.

No, I think what we're saying is that we have the tools necessary to address the concerns of traffic when we have a specific thing to respond to. What we're doing right now is spot zoning for traffic, and that's not a good way to do this.

So anyway... Is there a way that we could... If we deny this, can we say, however, we... We suggest that there be alternate ways to address operational for this project, this site, operational.

No, nothing for this site. There is no site. There is no site. We can have no opinion about any particular project. You cannot be saying you're approving this or not approving that. What you're doing is saying whether you want this law. This is a law, a subdivision regulation. It's the law that's being asked to be changed. Now, it's very specific to White Oak. White Oak is the only lie-tip neighborhood we have in the county. It was specifically created... to do what it is doing which is there's a list of transportation projects that the county decided it wanted in white oak and that when developers came in they didn't want them to do individual improvements they wanted them to pay for a list of projects that the county decided is what was good for this part of the county so that is the larger lie tip policy that is there already, has existed for years. Now, there is a list of projects, and I believe that our staff wants that list updated, and we have been asking for the county to update that list. So if you want to ask for something, I would suggest that you ask that the LIHTC list of project improvements be looked at, because that's really what needs to be done here.

And I think that's kind of what I was getting at a little bit.

It's that list. It's what needs to be done. And that can be sent in the transmittal.

And you can't say, like, connecting?

No, you don't want to say there's no particular project. It's just that that list of transportation improvements should be looked at and maybe updated to determine what's best now out there in this neighborhood.

That's what you can say. Can I say that? We can do that. I totally agree that we do that, but But even though it wasn't for a specific project, what this is about is this project. That's what everybody came for.

What this testimony is about. That may or may not be what this bill is about. This bill is what it is. But yes, we know that this neighborhood is concerned about this project.

I like your approach. I would preference that we deny this. No. Not recommend this. Transmit comments. Yeah. Okay. Not move forward.

You can say that you don't support the SRA as currently. And you can say you'd also like to ask that the LIHTC list of road improvements and the traffic be studied. so that a potentially new list of improvements could be recommended for this area.

Well, can we say that the new list could be studied and look at any kind of mitigation required for the impact to the existing communities?

They'll look at the traffic in the area. I mean, that is the point of the list.

As part of the impact of this project.

Not this project.

No, impact of the later. I'm not talking about this project. See, the problem is that when they brought... like any kind of policy, and we have it in some of the zoning, red zoning, that you're not going to ask them for LATL, okay? But at least in here, it says you don't do the study, but pay to do. So we have a resource in here to do the mitigation, because some part of the county, they said don't do a study and don't pay. But in here, They said, don't do a study but pay. So the funding exists to do the mitigation to this impact and to actually do the analysis for the impact. And this is what I want to refer with any kind of correct language into that comment or transmittal memo that why we are saying no to this SIR, but we think the right place to do to achieve the comments is there.

Just to update the list of projects. Yeah, that's what I support.

That's what I support. If that comes there, yeah.

Let me ask a question just for clarification. whatever phantom potential development comes here that we're not talking about. When it comes, we still have to make a finding of adequate public facilities, no matter if there's an LATR or not. So part of what we're going to do for reviewing any site plan is make a determination of whether the public facilities are adequate, which is something that staff and the rest of us are going to go into, which is why an SRA is an inappropriate way to deal with this right now. So there's nothing... precluding us from making any of the decisions and adjustments to traffic and access at the point where we have something in front of us that we can review. And secondly, I fully support the transmittal letter indicating that there should be a review of where and what projects a LATIP is addressing. I'm not going to suggest that we maybe think about whether LATIP is an appropriate way to do it in the first place, since we only got one. That's a little bit beyond the scope. But Definitely that the SRA, given its situation right now, is not the appropriate way to do it.

To answer your question, Carrie Sanders, for the record, East County Division Chief, you are correct. We will have to evaluate, the staff will have to evaluate, when an application comes in, we'll have to make sure that this is safe, adequate, and efficient. And we will have to demonstrate that, and we will have to have other agencies, such as the fire department, Department of Permitting. We will have WSSC. We will have all agencies review this to make sure it's safe, adequate, and efficient. So I think the community will have the confidence to know that all of that will happen at that time. In terms of the LATIP, Local Area Transportation Improvement Program, The planning board has also shared with us in previous briefings that they would like to have that improvement program looked at again and reviewed. And I do think that that's appropriate that you're going to put this in the transmittal letter. It's consistent with what you've shared with us in other briefings. So I do think that is good feedback to give to the county council. I know the county council has also addressed this issue as well in updating the local area transportation improvement program. And so this might be a very good way for us to reinforce that idea that you've had in the past.

So that we have other items we have to go through, I think there's... general consensus that we vote against this SRA, we give comments against this SRA, and that we do provide some comments about revisiting the LATIP list as discussed.

Well, I have a point of clarification. All we're voting for is to transmit each one of our comments back to the county council. And it's not necessarily an unanimous vote to have one unified comment, correct?

No, we need to have a vote. Yes.

The board would have an opinion. Yeah. The board would have an opinion. It would be to reject the SRA or to oppose the SRA. Yeah.

Just like anything. Yeah. A motion that we would, the majority would agree to do something.

And that is to- We'll reflect if you were to vote against it, that it was a four to one vote potentially. But we usually don't put the dissenting opinion in the transmittal.

Right. But my support of the SRA The vote against is generally my support of the SRA from council member Meek, correct? Yes.

In this instance, if you voted against the motion that I think is being made, it would show as one support and four against the SRA.

Shall I make the motion then at this point? Yes, please. All right. Move that the planning board transmit comments against the proposed SRA 26-01. including discussion here today as well as additional comments in the transmission letter related to updating the list of traffic improvements, transportation, sorry, transportation improvements within the White Oak LATIP, and additionally including previous comments that we've made about updating LATIP in general for the area. A part of what we just said a minute ago. Someone write that up that it doesn't sound like him.

Second. All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. All opposed? Aye. Okay, so it's 4-1-0. Thank you so much. Thank you. And then I thank you all for coming out. And we will take a two-minute break and start with our next item, item number 10, Zoning Text Amendment 2605, Expedited Approval Plan, Job Creation Project. where staff is recommending the planning board transmit comments to the district council supporting the ZTA with amendments. Thank you. We're on item number 11, zoning text amendment 2606, accessory residential units, accessory dwelling unit, where staff is recommending that the planning board transmit comments to the district council supporting the ZTA. We have Ben Burbitt again presenting this item. Welcome, Mr. Burbitt.

Thank you, Ben Burbert, for the record with the design, placemaking, and policy. I'm actually going to be turning almost all this presentation over to my lovely colleagues that will introduce themselves that are sitting at the front table. I just wanted to give the board a really brief update of what we're thinking with this. You'll remember this is one of two ZTAs that we came to you with a few weeks ago asking you to transmit this to the council. They have its back. As part of that transmittal, the board had requested staff to look into a couple of things about how the current process works, as well as what some other peer jurisdictions are doing. And so we have that integrated into the presentation. One of the things that we did kind of mention to the board before that we still believe in is that we're on a bit of a time crunch to get this put forward, both from the council's elective schedule constraints as well as the state policy constraints. And so while there might be some really enticing things that we could talk about and really want to change with the way we do ADUs and our policy, a lot of them would actually require bills to be written and introduced that we don't have before us. Only a little bit of it's really zoning related. We're going to go ahead and ask the board to take its vote on the ADU ZTA before we sort of give the follow-up presentation. But if there are elements of that follow-up presentation that the board really wants to make sure the council knows that we like and want included in the transmittal as something that is of interest for us to pursue further in policy, we can include those comments in there. So I'm just giving the heads up, and then I'm going to turn the presentation over.

Thanks, Ben. Good afternoon, everyone. For the record, Bob Nutsivis, Vermonian Housing Planner with the Design, Placemaking, and Policy Division. And today, as Ben mentioned, we'll be discussing ZTA 2606 on accessory dwelling units. So just wanted to preview the staff recommendation before we dive in. Staff recommends that the planning board support ZTA 2606 as introduced with a minor change to reduce redundancy in the code. In line with House Bill 1466, Senate Bill 891, the CTA promotes and encourages the creation of accessory dwelling units on land with single-family detached dwelling units. And just to reiterate some of what Ben had said, given that Montgomery County already has a fairly robust ADU policy in place, the CTA is only changing the code to the extent that is required to comply with state code, which we need to adopt by October 1 of this year. And so we want to focus this item on moving forward these specific changes. As you might remember, we came to you all on March 27th. We brought the proposed ZTA for initial comments and transmitted a letter to the district council requesting the introduction. ZTA 2606 was formally introduced on April 21st by Council President Fanny Gonzalez and incorporated the amendments that were recommended by planning staff. At this time, planning staff recommend an additional minor modification to the introduced ZTA that addresses redundancy in the language, and we'll get into that. And the ZTA is scheduled for a council public hearing on June 9th. Context on ADU policy and production in Montgomery County before getting into the actual code changes, and you might remember a little bit of this history lesson from before. But today, building an ADU in Montgomery County is mostly a by-right process facilitated through the Department of Housing and Community Affairs and the Department of Permitting Services, but this was not always the case. Before 2013, ADUs required a special exception or conditional use from the county's Board of Appeals, and this was a fairly lengthy legal process. Through ZTA 1211, the county removed the special exception requirement, except for accessory apartments that didn't meet the spacing and parking requirements. It also shifted ADUs to a licensing system administered by DHCA. And then ZTA 1807 in 2018 removed the conditional use approval requirement for all accessory dwelling units. And then the most recent update was in 2019 with ZTA 1901, and this made even more significant changes to the ADU policy which made it much easier for homeowners to build these units. Broadly, it removed minimum lot sizes for the principal dwellings. It revised limited use standards for attached and detached ADUs and relaxed parking requirements. And now with this CTA in 2026, we're expanding the zones ADUs are allowed in as a limited use, amending the use standards for all ADUs and further relaxing parking requirements to be compliant with the state code. From the Department of Permitting Services on the number of ADUs permitted by years since 2019. This is when the policy change was made to make them mostly by right. And so while ADUs were technically legal before this change, very few were built given the restrictions that I mentioned. Since 2019, 222 ADUs have been permitted across the county. And the map shows exactly which planning areas most of these have been built. Most are in Bethesda, Chevy Chase, Kensington, Wheaton, and Silver Spring. The CTA was the Maryland's General Assembly House Bill 1466, which passed during its 2025 legislative session and became effective on October 1, 2025. And the purpose of this bill is to promote and encourage the creation of ADUs to help solve the state's housing shortage and meet its housing needs. The bill recognizes that to accommodate all who want to live in the state, Maryland would need a mix of quality housing types and affordability options, and ADUs are an important part of that mix. As mentioned, the act requires that by October 1 of this year, local governments adopt a local law authorizing the development of ADUs on land with an existing single-family detached dwelling unit. Further guidance was provided on what a local law governing ADUs must include. As I mentioned, we already have a fairly robust ADU policy. So we're making the changes that are necessary to comply with the state code. And some of these areas of change include providing for the development of ADUs as defined in the bill and excluding ADUs from density calculations. And we'll go into these changes in the next section. The development of accessory dwelling units on, and I quote, land with a single family detached dwelling unit as the primary dwelling unit. And so Montgomery County's current code permits ADUs based on zone rather than land use, and only allows ADUs as a limited use in the agricultural, rural, residential, and residential detached zones. So given the state's definition of ADUs based on land use, attached and detached ADUs must now be permitted as a limited use in all zones. where a single family detached unit is allowed. So this is all zones except the industrial zones. And you can see that in the use table here. The ZTA adds ADUs as a limited use in the remainder of the residential zones, the commercial residential zones, and the employment zones. Two changes to the definition of an ADU. The first is regarding the size standards. Senate Bill 891 defines an ADU as not greater than 75% of the size of and subordinate in use to the primary single family detached unit. Montgomery County's current code caps the maximum gross floor area for an attached ADU at 1,200 square feet or the square footage of a basement or cellar if the basement or cellar is used for the ADU. For detached ADUs, the maximum gross floor area is currently set at the least of 50% of the footprint of the principal dwelling, 10% of the lot area, or 1,200 square feet. And so to comply with the state's definition, the ZTA amends the definition of an ADU in Montgomery County code regardless of the type. to include the exact language that is set in the Senate bill. And the second change is not really a change to the definition, but it just corrects an error to the code that's published in American Legal, but it's written correctly in Ordinance 1906. So in American Legal, the final sentence seen here stops midway. The ZTA adds back in the language that's underlined here in red, includes an attached accessory dwelling unit and a detached accessory dwelling unit. So that's just filling in the gap that was missing. In the definition changes I just outlined, this ZTA removes the use standards detailing the size specifications of attached and detached ADUs. And per state law, the use standards are now the same for both attached and detached ADUs and are only based on the percentage of the primary single-family dwelling unit. So these two sections and the lines highlighted here are no longer relevant. Now getting into the parking requirement changes. The 2019 ADU zoning update significantly loosened parking requirements. Currently, each ADU requires one off street parking space. And this is in addition to the two parking spaces required for the single family unit. But if the dwelling unit is within one mile of any metro rail or Mark station, the ADU is exempt from this requirement. Additionally, a parking waiver may be requested and granted by the hearing examiner if it's determined that there's adequate on street parking. The Senate bill requires that local jurisdictions complete a parking study if their local laws impose off-street parking requirements on ADUs. And since we do have a parking requirement in place, this parking study was conducted. The state law also mandates a waiver provision if parking is required. As I mentioned, the code already has this provision in place, and it's also being expanded through the CTA.

Can they have the same driveway access? I'll do that for that. Do they need separate access or driveway for ADUs? I forgot.

All the code requires is that the property itself have the space. And the space can be in the same driveway as the primary structure, which most driveways already can. Except for in the very urban areas, most driveways already can accommodate three or more cars when you add the garage and driveway space together. So yeah, they don't have to be separate access points for the car. OK.

I'll get into the parking study findings. The Act does not define the elements of a parking study, but it does require that any additional off-street parking requirements established for ADUs consider a list of factors that are explored in this parking study. And just to keep in mind, many properties, especially the newer construction or on larger lot sizes, they already have garage and driveway spaces to accommodate three or more parked vehicles. And while these properties, they may still choose to create a dedicated parking space for an ADU, they would not be required to. So the following parking study analysis is assumed to only apply to the subset of existing properties where two or less parking spaces currently exist. So the first consideration that the parking study looks at is the cost of parking. Per the zoning code, a minimum parking space for a vehicle is 8 and 1 half by 18 feet, or 153 square feet. Accounting for a reasonable time, that amounts to 175 square feet of paved area per new parking space. And using Montgomery Planning's cost estimate calculator, this comes to just under $3,000 for an additional on-site parking space. The second factor that's considered is whether sufficient curb area exists along the front line of properties to accommodate on-street parking. And this has already been considered in the county's existing parking requirements for ADUs through the hearing examiner waiver. We found that creating a single policy reliant on curb area and on-street parking is difficult because each block and each lot frontage is unique and must consider factors such as fire hydrants, other utilities, lot widths, street widths, et cetera. And therefore, evaluation on a case-by-case basis remains the most practical way to determine if on-site parking is required for an ADU. is the increase in impervious services due to the creation of new off-street parking and its relation to stormwater management. In Montgomery County, expansions to driveways, whether they be to accommodate an ADU or out of personal preference, are not subject to a Department of Permitting Services permit or a stormwater management plan. They fall under Maryland law's lot-to-lot surface drainage provisions, where landowners are generally assumed to have reasonable use of their property and allow natural service water flow from higher to lower land. Therefore, requiring an onsite parking space for an ADU does not create any special provision not already in place for a single-family homeowner.

I didn't understand. So if they do an ADU, so they're going to have increased the impervious area for just the footprint of ADU and also maybe parking. They still have to do a stone drainage or a stone water management for that additional impervious area, correct? That's required.

They may have to do it for the ADU structure itself if it exceeds a certain size. But the parking, at least based on DPS's website and my conversations with them, if somebody's just adding a small addition to a driveway for a parking pad, there is no permit that is pulled or required for that. The permits usually have to do with actually having a new access point installed. Again, this is looking just at the parking study, and it's not looking at the development of an ADU entirely. And so from the purposes of a parking study, there may be increases in impervious surface, but it would be managed through the existing state policy that its homeowner is individual responsibility to manage and maintain safe conveyance.

I understand. But when they do the... they need the parking, that's when they do the ADU. So when they build them together, they both would be calculated as one. They wouldn't let them do it piecemeal. So when someone does an ADU and that ADU requires parking, then the total impervious area added together as one construction and that's what the stormwater management is required. DPS wouldn't allow you do it the ADU first and get stormwater management for that and then secondly go back and do the parking and not do a stormwater management. That's called piecemeal and it's not allowed.

We can...

I'll get into this next, but the CTA does reduce the parking provision for lots without on-site parking, and so that should save both cost and impervious service as well. And of the parking study is the variability in parking due to the size of the ADU's lot. And it's true that there is wide variability of lot sizes that include single-family detached dwellings. But while lot size does play a role in the ease of providing on-site parking, there's no standard assumption that can be made regarding the minimum lot size necessary to accommodate parking. Other factors such as topography, building size, and lot shape also play a role. And so this ZTA does address this and expands the parking waiver to account for small and irregular lots. And I'll get into those changes next. So the ZTA amends the county code in two areas to align with the Senate bill's mission of discouraging unnecessary parking. First, Montgomery County code currently requires creating at least two on-site parking spaces if a new driveway is to be constructed for the ADU, one for the ADU and an additional space for the existing dwelling. This ZTA amends this code by requiring only one parking space for the ADU in this situation. And that's seen in the red text in the first bullet here. The second change is an additional parking waiver. While Montgomery County code currently allows for a parking waiver if the hearing examiner finds adequate on-street parking, a parking waiver for small or regular lots is also in line with the Senate bill's intended purpose. This additional waiver may be necessary to allow for an ADU on smaller lots, which can be seen in the newly added townhouse, multifamily, and mixed-use zones. And the ZTA adds language, as seen in the red in the second bullet here, that considers the property's capacity for additional on-site parking and removes a potential barrier to building an ADU. Introduction hearing, when we came to you first, the planning board requested information on the hearing examiner parking waivers, the number of requests that have been submitted, and the complexity of the process. According to records from the Office of Zoning and Administrative Hearings, 16 parking waivers have been processed since 2020, with one additional case pending final reports and decisions. And the application for a parking waiver consists of a one-page form that's found online, and OSA does not collect a fee for waiver requests. In FY25, OSA issued reports for these waivers within an average of 13.4 days following the close of the record. And OSA does not specifically track parking waiver approvals and denials. Planning staff reviewed a sample of decisions available online and did not identify any denials. Additionally, since the hearing examiner's appointment in July 2024, she does not recall issuing a denial for a parking waiver. So next, moving on to the density calculation changes, the Senate Bill 891 states that one of the requirements for local laws governing ADUs is to exclude them from any density calculations. Currently, Montgomery County's code only excludes ADUs from density calculations in the agricultural and rural residential zones. Therefore, this ZTA removes these specific zones listed so that ADUs are excluded from density calculations in all zones. And the code complies with the state law.

So does this mean accessory dwelling units can essentially go in any zone that has a single family home?

Where a single family detached dwelling can be built. So that's all the zones except the industrial zones.

And is there any square foot requirement for the parcel that the dwelling unit single family home is on?

No. And so the... The main difference I think that we're trying to highlight is we used to only allow in very specific zones where the ADU can be because they were the zones where single-family detached homes were the primary use. Because the state said that any single-family detached home in the state should be allowed to do an ADU, that's what the change is reflecting is that In the CR zone, you are allowed to do single-family detached homes. We don't see them very often, but if somebody did build a detached home in the CR zone, they have to be allowed to also construct an ADU. The state bill had nothing to say about square footage, and that kind of gets back to the parking waiver where it specifically wanted us to look at small properties and would requiring parking be a barrier to creating an ADU. So the intent of the state bill is let the homeowner figure it out, if they have a tiny lot, how to get an ADU out of that property. And so we are silent in our code on a minimum lot size required for the ADU. It either will fit within the setbacks and lot coverage requirements, or it won't. So there's still going to be setbacks?

Correct.

Correct. They're still required to follow the accessory structure setbacks and any lot coverage limits of the zone. But if you have room left in that, or if you want to do it above or below, you should be allowed to create an ADU as long as you meet those other provisions.

Can the accessory dwelling unit share a wall with a single family home? Yes.

Yes, that would be an attached ADU.

It can be in a basement. It can be attached. It can be its own separate structure.

Thank you. Can it cover the whole open area? Or is it a limit? I thought it was a limit up to how much would be left.

So the underlying zoning's lot coverage requirements are still in place. OK.

So that's still in place. What about if there are HOA bylaws? What happened to that?

The state legislation actually has a section that deals with that, saying that HOAs are not allowed to put up barriers to producing ADUs. It's not something we manage here, obviously, at the planning department. And so we haven't really delved into that. That would become a case law issue if somebody were to file a challenge. But the state did try to get in front of that and actually said an HOA can manage, to some degree, further an ADU, like it can a shed or any other accessory structure. but it can't manage it to the extent that it effectively creates a prohibition on creating them.

So that passed the law?

That's in the state law that passed.

Was it passed last year or this year?

2025 session.

2025. Okay, yeah, I know it came in front of us, but I didn't know if it passed or not.

Other density calculation change. The current code also stipulates that if the property associated with an ADU is subsequently subdivided, the ADU is included in the density calculations. Based on the current language in the code, a property could undergo a subdivision that retains the principal single-family dwelling and ADU on the same lot. So this ZTA is adding in descriptive text in red here that clarifies, it's clarification text, that in the event of a subdivision of the property associated with the ADU, which places the ADU on a different lot, the detached ADU is then included in the density calculation. To get to the rear and side setback changes, the Senate Bill 891 specifies that ADUs may not establish setback requirements that exceed the existing accessory structure setback requirements from the side and rear lot lines. Currently in Montgomery County's code, a detached ADU must meet side setbacks equal to that of the principal structure and meet a rear setback of 12 feet. Additionally, if the structure is wider than 24 feet, there must be another one foot setback for each one foot of additional width. So the ZTA modifies the code to strike the existing setback provisions and instead require the detached ADU to have the same minimum side and rear setbacks as the existing accessory structure, and that complies with state law. Last one I'll go through is the additional recommended change that we're recommending on top of this introduced ZTA. Upon further review, planning staff recommends an additional revision to reduce redundancy in the setback provisions. So in Section 3.3.A.2.V, that establishes the setback requirements applicable to all accessory dwelling units, regardless of type. However, this section begins with the phrase, unless modified by the use standards for an accessory dwelling unit. And to comply with state law, ADU use standards cannot further modify setbacks. And therefore, this clause should be removed, as seen in the first bullet. And because this provision applies to all ADUs, Lines 115 to 118, which were mentioned in the previous slide, but they separately specify setback requirements for detached ADUs These are redundant and should be removed.

I guess a quick clarifying question on the accessory structure. So essentially what this is doing is just referring them back to general definition of accessory structure, right? You can't make an ADU have different requirements than any other accessory structure within the zoning unit. Okay. Because back on the previous slide, I was a little confused about the accessory structure language as the accessory structure.

Yeah, and then in this next slide, we are proposing removing that.

And I'm doing the thing where I jump you the gun.

Changes made to the code and now to the climate assessment required for each CTA. CTA 2606 is anticipated to have a combination of potential minor positive and negative impacts on the county's goals of addressing greenhouse gas emissions, carbon sequestration, and ensuring resilience and adaptive capacity of communities. The code changes could potentially increase AD development and impervious surface in some locations, but also recognizes that it supports infill development and increases housing flexibility in established communities. Letter of testimony related to ZTA 2606. It was generally supportive of the legislative effort to modernize the ADU framework and expand housing options, but it was a request for the elimination of the current owner occupancy requirement for ADUs to enhance housing access and affordability. This is a restriction in Section 2919 of the County Code, licensing procedures, and can't be modified through this zoning text amendment. So to make this change a separate bill would have to be brought into council.

So it looks like that. I sent that one. So that is still owner-occupied.

There is a requirement, yeah.

That's a seller requirement.

Correct.

And they didn't change that.

There was no state mandate to change that.

Yeah, I'm surprised.

We did have, Lisa Govoni, for the record, we did have a lot of discussions with the state through this process about potentially updating that, and they said that's not one of the things that we need to update. Probably because, again, this does not live in the zoning code. This lives in a separate section of code. Mr. Mortensen will present best practices, and it's generally considered one of the best practices, but that was one of the compromises that came out of 1901 last time.

Oh, great.

So that brings us to the conclusion to vote on. Do you think we have?

Yeah, we have one speaker.

Yep.

So thank you for your presentation. Michael Saxenian, you have three minutes.

Thank you for allowing me to speak. My name is Mike Saxenian. I live at 6405 Broad Street in Bethesda, and I've been a Montgomery County resident for 35 years. I did submit written testimony, but I wanted to just speak also directly because I think my personal situation is illustrative of what other homeowners and renters may face. I'm not an expert in this area. I've just learned in these last couple of minutes of testimony that owner occupancy requirements cannot be addressed in this area. I do hope that they will, however, be addressed. In my understanding, that was a recommendation from the state to remove owner occupancy requirements. I believe that owner occupancy requirements do discourage investments in ADU and limit the supply of ADUs. And I just thought my particular case might illustrate the point. I built an ADU a couple years ago after, just roll back, three years ago I retired from my position as head of McLean School in Potomac. I built an ADU in order to offset the high cost of real estate taxes and my mortgage so I could age in place. And I've been really pleased to have a tenant who is many years retired. But as I've gotten further into my retirement, I've started to think about working again, particularly in an interim head of school position to help schools that are in an emergency situation transitioning from departed head to a new one. These are typically one or two year assignments and typically out of the area. And what I came to understand was that I actually cannot take one of those assignments without either leaving my house vacant, which it would be difficult to do, or terminating the lease of my tenant, which I'm loathe to do. So it's I wanted to urge the council to amend that requirement. I think that would really encourage ADU adoption and make housing more affordable. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Saxicini, and I appreciate your comments. So the current law is that the principal home has to be or one of the units has to be lived in by

One of the units, either the ADU or the principal house, has to be lived in by the owner of the property.

And the penalties for not doing so are really high. I'm not an expert on this.

Okay. Thank you. We will continue to work on that.

I will add very quickly that last time, the owner occupancy, when we changed it, it used to be that you had to live in the principal dwelling, and now it's the principal or the accessory dwelling. That was changed almost immediately after ZTA 1901, so there is precedent for that being changed.

Who is enforcing that, DHCA?

Yes, ADUs are licensed by DHCA.

Yeah, it totally makes sense, this comment that we got.

Yeah, great, great. So why don't we go ahead and vote on this one. So the staff recommends that the planning board supports ETA 2606 as introduced with minor changes to reduce redundancy, and that in the House Bill 1466 and in Bill 891, this ETA promotes and encourages creation of . OK. So we only have the vote on the first. We support. Is there a recommendation to?

Would it be OK with the transmittal letter Encourage review of the principal dwelling unit. Go put something like that in the transmittal letter.

I second that.

What I'll say that might be a little abnormal here is because we do have a follow-up presentation that might invoke further idea. We might reconvene at the end of that to sort of see what other things you might want to encourage.

More than just this particular idea.

Yeah, but because we did have testimony that informed this, I think you can add it now, but we might slightly revisit what else was in the transmittal letter shortly. So can we wait and vote then?

Well, someone may have to leave. So at least we have this. We vote Is there a recommendation to do this? Yeah.

Oh, yeah. I'll move for the planning board to support ZTA 26-06 with the minor changes to address the updated state law. And also, we'll talk about the transplant letter next.

OK. Second.

Is there a second? Yeah. I did. Oh, you did? OK. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. These have 5-0. OK. Please.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you so much for your presentation.

And so just passing it on to Paul for the next part. But as a reminder, you all asked us to do a little research on ADU policies in other counties and states. And so Paul will discuss his research.

Good afternoon. Paul Mortenson, urban designer in the director's office. I'm coming here today to talk a little bit about other jurisdictions that we found quite interesting

Good afternoon. We're starting item 10. We've completed the voting part of item 11, so we're going to start item 10, which is the zoning text amendment 2605 expedited approval plan job creation project. Staff is recommending the planning board transmit comments to the district council supporting ZTA with amendments. We have Ben Burbitt here presenting this item.

Thank you, Chair Harris. For the record, Ben Burbitt with the Design, Placemaking, and Policy Division. Together, staff's recommendations for ZTA 2605 for the planning board, we are recommending that you transmit comments to the district council supporting this ZTA with some amendments that we'll get into. This was introduced on March 10th, 2026 by Council President Fannie Gonzalez, and it's been co-sponsored by Vice President Balcom and Council Members Katz, Friedson, Sayles, Jawando, Glass, Evans, Stewart, and Lutke. Not a very popular ZTA at all. There's a council public hearing scheduled for June 9th of 2026. What this is doing is it's amending the office and professional sort of use section of the code. Within that, we have a use called Signature Business Headquarters, which was first established in 2018 by ZTA 1805. Nobody's used it. It requires a really steep hurdle to enter the market, 20,000 new jobs minimum in one metro station policy area. amongst some other requirements that just make this very unusable. So to try to actually do something beneficial for economic development, we're lowering the qualification thresholds. The ZTA has introduced states that any employer with 200 or more employees from one company or any employee with any number of employers, if it's from a strategic industry or as a company that has received government incentives or funding, would be eligible for this job creation project title. What it's basically doing is taking Section 358D, which was Signature Business Headquarters, and it's just inserting job creation project. So the structure and the section number are staying the same, but some of the contents within are changing. The first change, Right now, only the CR zone, I believe, allows a signature business headquarters. We are now adding CRT, LSC, EOF, IL, and IM as eligible zones. These are our non-residential zones that are most likely to attract and locate a qualified employer, and so it makes sense to expand this list as presented. Again, the definition of a job creation project is any identified industry as a strategic industry sector in the economic development strategic plan and that has received government funding or at least 200 employees on site within two years. This is sort of the first concern the staff does want to raise, is in this definition. First, the idea of qualifying industries. The ZTA itself then lists some such as industries, including biohealth, hospitality, and life sciences, and then says, but you should refer to the strategic plan for the list. We just think that's too confusing, and the first three industries that are listed are too vague, and they don't perfectly align with our use code anyway. So we're recommending just sticking with the EDSP as the list of that. I'm seeing nodding, so I will continue. The next concern that we have is that right now it says that you have to be a qualifying industry. or anybody that creates 200 employees. Staff thinks this is a little too generous. The main benefit of being a job creation project is using our expedited approval plan process. And that's the process that has us get these plans to the board within 60 days, It really condenses our review of these things. It's a real big burden on staff time, not just here, but other agencies as well. And so while we do want some companies to be eligible for this, we don't want every company to become eligible for this. You sort of take away the incentive at some point. The simplest way to do that is just to make this an and. You need to be an identified strategic industry and have 200 employees. We think that still would allow some companies to potentially take advantage of this without making it too many companies. So we're recommending replacing or with and. What's the board's opinion on that?

I totally support that because what's going to happen that if they don't do that, you have to do the work and that takes away from other projects. So it's unfair, unjustice, and it's not inclusive.

So I think we can put and, but I don't know what they really intended, because it's not qualifying industry and receive government incentive, or I don't know what they meant by, I can see qualifying industry and 200, but I don't know what they meant by and receive government incentive, right? Because even if you look in there, they had something about government incentive, so I can't read their minds what did that mean.

I think what they were trying to say is you could be a really small company as long as you are in our targeted industry list and have received some sort of state or county grant or incentive to open that you should be considered a job creation project. And I think what we're saying is you also need to meet this employment threshold. We're trying to create jobs, and so having that minimum employment threshold also feels like it's an important part. of the equation to us.

I'm OK with doing this. Let's say and, and then they can go with whatever they want to add some clarifications if they want to. I'm fine with that.

The next thing that staff wants to clarify, the way it's written, it just says you have to be eligible. You have to have 200 jobs within two years. It doesn't actually say that they need to be new. And so I don't think the intent of this was for an existing company with 200 jobs to just move down the street. And I say that because if you get into the enforcement section, it starts talking about new. So we just want to be clear in the definition that we mean new jobs.

I 100% agree, new jobs.

All right. Moving into the enforcement section of the ZTA, it proposes sort of a three-step process. The first one at the time of application, an affidavit would be sent as part of the acceptance packet to the board saying that they intend to meet the criteria. And then when the two years of a UNO being issued, they need to provide evidence to the board that they have met their job creation thresholds. And then if they don't meet those thresholds, the enforcement section talks about how the plan will not be able to be amended as an expedited approval plan amendment. I think planning staff's agreeing with the general framework. We do want to make sure DPS is an added agency of who receives sort of evidence that this has been met, because they're really the enforcement agency, not us. And then I think we also have clarifying language that's better spelled out in the staff report. that we want to just more clearly say that you lose all eligibility as an expedited plan review generally if your site has not met these thresholds. Again, that doesn't mean that the site can't do anything, but if they need to make amendments, they would have to come back in as a site plan amendment at that point rather than an expedited approval plan amendment. So that is our recommendation on the enforcement section.

I thought it would be good. Wouldn't it be that by the time they had the people in place, wouldn't they have already Isn't it they come, and then they say, I'm going to create this building, or I'm going to do this. And I go ahead, and then they submit their plans, and we approve their plans. And then two years later, there's a check to say, did you really have 200? Did you really? So I don't know what the enforcement after the fact. Is this like, oh, if you come again, you won't? This is okay.

It's okay. There's no great way to enforce structural change, so it's the only thing we could come up with to at least put a little skin in the game. Okay, great.

Did you talk to DPS that you put this on them? Just coordinate with them, please.

Yeah, from what we've heard, and they have not raised objection. I mean, they see these as well, and they reach out to us usually if they have a problem with something, so they have not. Okay. And then the last two sections of the ZTA are remaining unchanged from what's in the Signature Business Headquarters section other than swapping the title out. With the climate assessment, there could be a combination of positive and negative impacts. Where these things get located is the primary factor as to how positive or negative these impacts would be. Reconstruction of existing urban sites reduces impact on land cover, which would be a positive. Not having requirements like the other expedited approval plan types on being located within red policy areas could increase transportation distance to employers to employees. Again, this also noted that new construction is more energy efficient, but also creates embodied emissions of having to create new stuff. And so it was really sort of seen as a wash of positives and negatives. In the assessment doing what it is asked to do, is there anything that could make this better from a climate perspective? It did say if this followed the other expedited approval plan process requirements of being in red policy areas, it could at least reduce some of the transportation impacts. We'll note staff is not recommending adopting this as part of our final recommendations, just because I think trying to create job creation projects we need to be flexible. And there are definitely areas that jobs could want to locate that are not in red policy areas. But it was important to note this, both for the board and for the council, that if they really wanted to put more of an environmental spin on this, that is something they could consider. So with that, staff's recommending the board vote to transmit a memo supporting this ZTA with the amendments that we've discussed today.

Great, great, great working through this. I support what you put up. And is there a recommendation to recommend to the board to transmit a memo to the district council supporting ZTA 2605 with amendments to streamline the definition, increase standards needed to qualify, clarify jobs, must be new to the county, and adding DPS to the enforcement?

Move that the board transmit the memo to the district council supporting ZTA 2605 with the comments and amendments from today.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. The ayes have it. Thank you so much. We will quickly, within 30 seconds, switch over to our last item of the day. Item number 12, zoning text amendment 2607, solar collection systems use standards. where staff has recommended the planning board transmit comments to the district council supporting this ETA. Our last item of the day, item 12, zoning text amendment 2607, solar collection systems, use standards. We have Ben Burbitt to take us home on this one.

Thank you, Chair. For the record and for the one new viewer we might have gained in the last two minutes, I am Ben Burbitt with the Design, Placemaking, and Policy Division. And I'm going to talk about staff's recommendations to the planning board for CTA 2607, solar collection systems. We are recommending you transmit a memo to the council supporting this CTA also with some minor amendments that we will discuss. This is the other ZTA that you heard on March 27th where we, as staff, requested the board transmit this to the council. They've done what we asked and introduced it on April 21st. It's back before us because that's what the zoning code requires we do. And there is a public hearing scheduled for June 9th on this item as well. This ZTA would modify limited use standards for solar collection facilities generally. This was in response also to 2025 state legislation, Senate Bill 931, House Bill 1036, that preempts local governments from enforcing its local land use authority on solar collection facilities over one megawatt. We've also used this as an opportunity to make solar generation easier to sort of, again, keep the spirit of the state legislation, and in this case, targeting rooftop solar to make it easier to install. Again, the way the landscape kind of works now, under one megawatt, we have local jurisdiction zoning authority. One to two megawatts goes through a new administrative process created by the Public Service Commission. meeting certain minimum threshold standards that they've set. Two to five megawatt facilities are now called distributed generation certificate of public convenience and necessity centers, which will have a separate review process that the Public Service Commission will handle with its whole public hearings and findings and necessary stuff, but they just do it instead of us. And then over five megawatts always had a different process that went through the Public Service Commission, and that has not changed. Again, as part of the ZTA, we have made a few modifications. The first is to actually define ground-mounted solar panels on dedicated support structures that tie directly with the foundation on the ground. rooftop mounted being panels that are on a structure mounted to the roof of another structure. With rooftop mounted, we're amending the limited use standards in the AR zone, as well as the next section, which covers all of the other zones. To allow rooftop mounted solar, as long as it's creating less than the limit that is being preempted by the state, without the need to do certain things such as site plan, meet additional setbacks, landscaping, or screening requirements, which are currently required. We are keeping the existing standards for all other zones when it comes to the lesser energy producing, the up to 200 in the AR zone or 120% of onsite energy usage in all of the other zones. Above that limit, if it's ground mounted, we are still requiring the setbacks and the screening and the other things because that's sort of where the applicability of screening and setbacks matters is when you're creating separate discrete structures for that.

Can I ask a quick clarifying question? On the percentages of production, how are we measuring that? Are we doing average kilowatt hours, or what's the...

It's average use per day. Okay. Or no, it's average annual baseline. Forgive me. Okay. And that has actually been clarified in the code, and we have a slide that's going to cover that.

I'm doing the thing where I'm jumping ahead of something. Okay, I'm going to stop talking today.

As I mentioned, there are a few revisions that we're recommending since we had originally sent this to you in March. We're clarifying that state code as public utilities article, just so that people know actually where to turn in the state code to look for this. We're clarifying... the state preemption discussion in the definition to clarify that what it does is collection facilities or facilities for which local zoning regulation is not preempted by Title VII of the public utilities article. The attachment that actually has us putting this in multiple parts of the code, we've decided to only put it in the definition section to not, again, create other layers of uncertainty. As you just mentioned, the annual baseline of is how we're measuring onsite energy usage. We're inserting that every time that appears. Because this section is really confusing and references both state and local code, we're clarifying the local code references by inserting the 59 in front of it. Normally we don't do that, but we just think it's a little more readable by doing it here. And then we are slightly reorganizing the zoning text amendment from how it was introduced Right now, we had kind of left the limited use standards for the Ag Zone as one run-on section, but we took the time to separate ground-mounted and rooftop-mounted for the other zone section. To be consistent, we're now just separating them on the Ag Zone as well, but we're not actually changing the intent of any of the provisions.

Just out of curiosity, with annual baseline production, that's not an ongoing, that's at the time of installation? So it's not like an, they don't have to continue to meet that standard, right?

Correct. I believe, well, the way it's written is it's based on how the state has chosen to measure it. Okay. So my belief is, yes, it's based off a one-time thing.

Yeah, most, you install it on your house, you're measuring against the existing baseline of the state's measurement of production and then, you know, energy efficiency reduction and all that stuff doesn't, you're not re-upping that every couple of years or something. It's making sure. Thanks.

This also had a climate assessment performed, which found moderately positive impacts, including lower dependency on the electric grid. Obviously, we're creating and using more clean energy in the county. Specific emphasis on rooftop solar changes are reducing the need to change land cover. and all of the associated negative impacts that would come with that, such as loss of tree canopy, urban heating, or changes to hydrology. And this, as one would expect, helps advance multiple climate action plan goals. Usually the ZTAs don't kind of get into that realm. So definitely positive impacts there. So in conclusion, staff is recommending the board vote to transmit comments supporting this ZTA, again, with the technical edits that we've discussed.

Thank you. One quick question. So I'm not sure. I don't have it in front of me. But there was one place where maybe in the ARC code, we had something about anti-reflection coding on roofs or something. And so given, and we took it out because I'm not sure the reference. But now, just out of curiosity, when we now have this section on rooftop, right, Is there any reason to keep at least the anti-reflective coating or anyone that would? These are for larger. Because the reason I say this is that we put solar on our home. Our neighbor just put solar on their rooftop. And on certain times, the reflection in the bedroom of that, maybe it doesn't have the coating on it or something, but it is a big glare. So I don't know, given we have, is it worth putting it there? Or it's just, if someone's going to have 120% or whatever, maybe the houses would be so far apart, it's in the country or something. I don't know what it, but do you understand what I'm saying? There's a, but I don't know what's.

I do understand what you're saying. Board can recommend whatever. I don't have a strong opinion, I think, either way on this. Like, we just sort of looked at all of the standards that felt like they were in place because they were trying to mitigate impact to a neighboring use. That was requiring screening, the additional setbacks, the site plan review, and requiring the special coding just sort of, to us, it fit into that same thing as what's the What's the harm that was trying to be mitigated for in a larger ground-mounted system? And again, this is where I think it gets case-by-case complicated.

No worries. No worries. We keep going.

Well, this is something that DPS can handle, because it's a material, and it is a reflection to the next door neighbor. I think that all of these solar roof, they come for the permit approval. They have an expedited process for this to be approved. But this is something that it could be put in and talk to them to see that if this is something that they could explore.

I'm curious, do we have it on the ground mounted because we're concerned about Cars, like the glare. I don't know. I'm just trying to understand why did we have it in the first place. Do you know?

I don't want to guess on why it's on ground mounted, because I wasn't involved in that. But I imagine it was for glare. And I could imagine it could be cars or people at home. But at the same time, as you're noting, it's not required for smaller installations on private roofs. So I don't know.

CHRIS RODGERS- Yeah, no worries. No worries. So is there a motion to recommend to transmit comments to district council supporting staff's ETA recommendations on for VTA 2607 with technical edits proposed by staff to make the code sections cleaner.

Can I ask one question? And then I'll make the motion real quick. I just want to clarify one thing. For the roof mounted, is it now the case that we can exceed 120%? We just need approval from the utility? Am I reading it correctly?

Correct. And they always needed – they always could exceed 120%, but they had to do the site plan, meet the setbacks, provide screening.

No, for – sorry, for rooftop. Yes.

That was always – rooftop also always allowed you to go over 120%. Oh, okay. It just required all these extra reviews that we sort of – Weren't sure what the benefit of that was. Yeah. So we're trying to make it a little easier to do larger rooftop by taking away those extra requirements.

Got it. Okay. Sounds good. All right. Then I'll make the motion. Move to transmit comments supporting ZTA 2607. Second. With the technical edits proposed by staff.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. The ayes have it. Thank you so much. I really appreciate this. And do we have time for?

I can probably do another 15 or 20 minutes. Yeah, yeah.

How much time do we need? This ends this, the section item number 12, and we're going to... Yeah, we'll keep going. Okay.

Can you do it in 20 minutes? All right.

Okay, great. Okay, thank you. Okay, great. Thank you. Paul Morrison is going to do a presentation on some studies he's done around the accessory deling units.

Which one?

Are we ready?

I'm Paul Mortenson, again, Urban Designer in the Director's Office, and we have been asked to put together a little report for you regarding how ADUs have been implemented in other jurisdictions across the country. And so I wanted to get into that with you. We picked a few different locations that we thought had been provided some unique characteristics on ADUs. And so I wanted to start off with just a little bit here on the history of ADUs. And ADUs have been very successful throughout the nation's history. In the late 1800s, actually, the best neighborhoods that you've seen if you've visited New York and Chicago, for instance, the brownstone neighborhoods were primarily created through the creation of ADUs. The ADU was the basement flat that was used to provide rent for people who were building the brownstones, essentially the new middle class, the white-collar class in those cities. So they were very prevalent in the creation of cities and neighborhoods. In the early 1900s, when Euclidean zoning came into effect, it basically began to discourage a second home on a single family parcel. So that sort of began the erosion of the creation of ADUs. And ADUs then started to come back into at least the dialogue of communities in the late, around 1980, 1990s, with the new urbanist movement to sort of create mixed income, mixed use, and mixed housing type neighborhoods. So some of the jurisdictions that I looked at, one, and I'll get into sort of state regulations on several of these, and then also more into the city municipalities that were within some of these states. So for California, California has encouraged ADUs for more than 40 years now. However, local jurisdictions made them difficult to realize through regulatory restrictions, thereby eliminating their construction. In 2019, the state finally passed legislation that mandated the construction of ADUs. And in 2024, they expanded the legislation for ADUs to allow even more units on multifamily lots and more ADU types on single-family lots. And so as you can see here, some of the elements of the California state law was no impact fees on ADUs under 750 square feet. A minimum of 150 square feet for an ADU and a maximum of 1,200 square feet. Attached ADUs could be 50% of the size of the house. No owners were required to live on site. It basically, effectively, the law discouraged short-term rentals by having a minimum of 30-day rental time. And the state offered $40,000 in grants to reimburse pre-development fees, which was a big push for the ADUs. The other thing that the state allowed is once an ADU is created, particularly if it's a detached ADU on your lot, you were able to sell the ADU and detach it from your lot and sell it separately. So before the new ADU legislation was enacted, less than 1,300 ADUs were being permitted per year in the state of California. Post-legislation in 2019 permitted ADUs expansion to almost, and they were getting almost 25,000 ADU permit per year annually. So now ADUs actually count for about one in five units produced in the state of California today. The state removed roadblocks and created financial incentives, and that really pushed it to the next level. In Los Angeles, the In all the land that comprises Los Angeles neighborhoods, about 60% of it is currently single-family zoned areas. So interestingly enough, LA did not comply with providing comments to the California state laws. And so the state law was enacted without comment in Los Angeles. So that was a good thing in this case. But, however, later Los Angeles did further streamline the approval process and produced some additional restrictions and incentives. They reduced permitting fees and provided property tax exemptions, especially if the unit was rented to low or moderate income tenants. This was a huge change in standard practice, and because LA is such a significant destination, short-term rentals in ADUs were also fully allowed. Even with this restriction of the short-term rentals, recent studies have shown that 80% of all ADUs in Los Angeles are permanent residents living in that housing. Los Angeles has seen as many as 7,000 ADU permits a year following their initiation of the legislation, which was up significantly from a high of about 80 units per year. before their legislation. 7,000 a year? 7,000, yeah, from a previous of about 80. So that was a big change. And also, Los Angeles has also promoted the ADUs through, they had a national competition a few years ago for standard types of ADUs that can be pre-made and used on sites. And that was a big, I think, promo for even providing more, promoting more ADUs. Going to the next state, Washington state. Washington state laws on ADUs were significantly changed in 2023 through 2025. Seattle's laws served as a blueprint for the statewide legislation. Specifically, Seattle removal of the owner occupancy was a success in expanding ADUs construction. that the state adopted it. The state also adopted the two ADU units allowed on a single lot. So some of the things that the state also did was no off-street parking was required for an ADU. Maximum size of an ADU is 1,000 square feet or no more than 60% of the principal house, whichever is larger. Interesting comment there. Whichever is larger. Most restrictions in most states and counties are usually whichever is smaller. No more than 50% of the impact fees of the principal home can be charged for an ADU, and a minimum of 60-day rental for an ADU was also part of the state requirements. For Seattle, In 2019, with the new state laws allowing two ADUs, Seattle is now seeing de facto ADU duplexes being created on sites. ADU permitting and construction is now outpaced single-family home permits. Seattle also increased lot coverage allowances if an ADU was created on the site. So previous, the zoning in many of the residential neighborhoods had a very strict 35% lot coverage. But with an ADU, you were allowed to get up to 50% lot coverage. ADUs also does not count towards the allowed FAR, which does not restrict the buildable size of the main house. So if you don't increase the increase of the ADU for the FAR, you can still put it into your house, which will have bigger houses. You can see also on the slide that 1,000 ADU permitted per year in the city. The height limit was also increased, which was significant because it allowed a two-story ADU, particularly on a detached unit, which with the previous height of 18 feet, you could barely fit upstairs space. No street improvements were required for an ADU. You can subdivide the ADU within the lot. And the entrance and exterior stair requirements were also reduced, which was very helpful. And then in 2022, the city of Seattle adopted and approved designs that you could just get from the city for creating ADUs. Even though many more ADUs were allowed and were being created, for the last few years, CL particularly has identified the high interest rates and hookup fees as really slowing, actually, the production of ADUs recently. Oregon, ADU standards in 2018, state enacted laws to promote ADUs in all zones. Oregon now is actually the largest state producer of ADUs in the country. And so their changes have been very helpful. And the state has also adjusted all single family zones to allow missing middle type housing. And so that has helped a lot in kind of changing sort of the whole dynamic of how housing is created in Oregon. They have no owner living on site requirements. and they also have no rental less than a month, so they do have short-term restrictions as far as the state is concerned. They also cap the maximum size at 800 to 900 square feet, depending on a couple different restrictions, or 75% of the house, whichever, was smaller. So that was for the state. In Portland, where a lot of the ADUs are being created within the state, Portland has worked on ADU standards since 1998, so they've been doing this for a while. They eliminated system development charges, and system development charges basically are the hookup fees and the infrastructure fees that were typically required for housing, so they've eliminated those. In 2020, they allowed up to two ADUs on a lot. ADUs increase FAR allowed on... The ADUs increase the FAR that is allowed on a lot if you do create the ADU. The city has strict regulations on rural areas and supports their urban boundary system, which is meant to reduce sprawl. where you have less density. Portland specifically has a growth boundary lines, which they've created to really reinforce their transit systems. And so to reduce sprawl, they've created the boundary. So to support that, they have suggested that outside of the boundaries, it's a lot harder to build an ADU than it would be inside the growth boundaries, again, to support their growth initiatives. Short-term rentals are allowed in Portland, and the maximum size for an ADU can be up to 900 square feet. ADUs must be 40 feet behind the front property line in the city of Portland, which is a fairly unique requirement. I have included the 800 homes catalog of Vermont as part of this study because I thought it was very interesting to talk about a statewide program for ADUs and other missing middle types that sort of feature pre-approved plans that can be used within the state. These plans have been publicly vetted by the public and also by professionals, and the designs were also vetted by these people and by historians and other groups within this state. So these were adopted with all of their approvals. The 802 Homes program is designed to bypass zoning hearings and reduce development costs for those housing types. Like most jurisdictions across the country, initial ADU laws were not effective because most smaller municipalities used restrictions to limit or effectively eliminate their construction. The 2020 law changed this. The new 2026 802 homes catalog is meant to encourage more housing. And you can see some of the things that this allows. One of the things I think was very interesting is that these pre-approved plans were designed in a way that they could very easily be built as modular homes and be moved and transported onto sites. So it really allows you to build either a modular home that you buy, a panelized system home that you could buy, or just the standard development type of an ADU home if you wanted to. As part of the Vermont plan, the state law now allows the ADUs to be 30% of the primary home size or 900 square feet, whichever is larger. And there is no more than one parking space required for an ADU. And the housing program provide up to $50,000 grants for building ADUs. And the grant loan waiver if the owner works with the state to identify and accommodate previously homeless tenants for up to five years. So if you do that, you could borrow up to $50,000 for the grant. The grant is waived if you go through that program for five years. Some of the common themes, the jurisdictions that have been most successful in permitting and building ADUs have the fewest limitations. That's just a given. They are allowed by right with no on-site parking requirements, no owner occupancy restrictions, often limited or no short-term rental restrictions, They typically have allowed either greater lot coverage or greater FIR if the owner adds the ADU. They expedite, reduce, or eliminate reviews and utility hookup fees or other development charges that often restrict a small-time developer or homeowner from building. And a lot of these jurisdictions have created a grant program that has helped in the ADUs. Two weeks ago, I went to the CNU in Northwest Arkansas and went through both Bentonville and Fayetteville, where they were locating the conference. And it was very interesting, because walking around, I was seeing ADUs everywhere. And particularly in Bentonville, I would bet in the downtown area, at least 75% of all the houses were either brand new houses or houses that were renovated. And almost all of them included an ADU. And so some of the things that I found out, I spoke with the planning department there, and specifically in Bentonville, which has seen a dramatic growth that will continue for many years with Walmart, J.D. Hunt, and Tyson's headquarters, all now located in the downtown. Because of the growth, they created Plan Bentonville with the help of Duaney, Plater, Zyberg, or DPS CoDesign, and Placemakers LLC with the Planning Commission. This plan turns the previous zoning code into a form-based code, which for ADUs allows greater lot coverage of up to 75% of the lot in the downtown sites if you create an ADU. In less urban sites, lot coverage is also increased, but at less percentages. The new plan also does not regulate minimum lot sizes, but rather creates minimum lot widths, which is interesting. And so some of these photos I wanted to show on the upper left was a ADU that was added to a house in downtown Fayetteville. Fayetteville also is seeing a dramatic amount of growth, but here you can see a unit built above a garage. To the right of that, the yellow, is a historic house that's right in downtown Bentonville that just added a new garage and an ADU over their garage to maximize lot coverage to achieve the full equity that they can achieve on the lot. The bottom left photo is a brand new house, more of a contemporary home. that was built on a new lot that is configured by the lot width that is allowed through the new standards. And to maximize, again, the lot coverage, where they got 75% of lot coverage, they built an ADU, which you can see there in the back, which is over a garage fed by a driveway behind the unit. So this was essentially what they're trying to achieve. And they're trying to get ADUs... and they're almost getting them on every house, to accommodate a lot of the people that are coming to this place to either interview or work at these headquarters or looking for housing, and it takes time to find a house. So that's what they've encouraged. The bottom right I included, and it's under construction, but that is a duplex building. that has a duplex ADU behind it. So as you can see, behind is a detached garage for each of those units, each with an ADU above it. So on site, there's four units on this one site developing a duplex. Again, the downtown area to really encourage dramatically more housing. And again, to also meet the full coverage of the lot at 75%. That's the end of my presentation. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer the best I can, but thank you very much.

Thank you so much for doing that research. It's really, really interesting. So my question, you mentioned something about some of the teachers had minimum lot widths. Do you have a sense of what were those lot widths, the minimum lot widths?

Yes. Of course, what happens is they've divided... through the plan, and I don't have the exact names, but there's the downtown residential. There is the edge from downtown residential. There's different categories for that. I believe the narrowest ends up being about 40 feet. 30 to 40 feet is the narrowest lot width. And again, they eliminated size, so the depth... Your depth can be whatever you determine it wants to be. And so what they're trying to do is eliminate the minimum lot sizes.

Well, it sounds like they really incentivize the ADUs by maximum large percentage of the total site could be filled with housing. minimize the, like, no restrictions on home ownership. You know, there are no restrictions on, well, limited restrictions on how long you need to stay there. All of those giving you grant money for pre-development, stuff like that. It seems like they really wanted, and it sounds like some of these communities, too, they pushed this more over than duplexes. It sounds like it was easier. They embraced that ADUs over newer housing typologies like duplexes and triplexes.

Yes. And I think... I mean, in the Vermont case, I think ADUs is just one of the many missing middle types that they have in the new catalog, the 802 homes catalog. And so in that case, I don't think they're emphasizing ADUs over others. But, for instance, in Bentonville, I think they are really emphasizing and really promoting the construction of ADUs by allowing you to have a maximum lot coverage if you create them. And so as you see in the county right now, every teardown basically is maximizing lot coverage. If they have a 35% lot coverage allowed, they're building a house that is literally 35% lot coverage just to maximize value. So they're following that lead, but doing it in a way that encourages... more housing through the ADU. Right. Thank you.

Any other comments from our...

I do have to go pick up my daughter soon, so not as many comments as I would like. But for one, is it possible to get the slides for this? Because I have the comparison matrix where I like to review the slides. And I think that there's something here that shows, like, There is a pent-up demand, and I think that the comparison for what we produce in Montgomery County being, I think, larger than – definitely larger than Portland. I don't know what Seattle is off the top of my head. But we're, again, in terms of production, absurdly low given what we could produce given the locations we have, even within just the teardown market that we have. And I think that I – I'm glad you put the comparison, and I'm glad I also didn't ask before you pulled the slide up, because that would have been like three times today. I've been counting.

Damn.

Somebody was paying attention. But that comparison is interesting, and I think the key ones, you touched on them and I took away, was the parking lot coverage and the occupancy requirement. And I think we heard that from the testimony as well. Other things as well. grants and other things like that, but the lot coverage of parking and the owner occupancy seem to be ones that are key there. I think part of that has to do with financing, so we'll be on scope today. But I think there's considerable evidence here for pent-up demand and considerable evidence for pent-up demand based on restrictions that we have in place or have not removed yet. And I think that's worth taking a look at potentially proposing updates in addition to what we've talked about with the state. Mostly just because I want to see Ben here more often, you know, and dragging him out of, you know, dragging him out of here. But I think it's worth, there's pretty straightforward adjustments we could make that might unlock a little bit more opportunity. And I think you're clear, particularly with the teardown market and what we're seeing with sort of McMansion size moving to exactly as much as you can get to increase the square footage in there for the price. Taking the ADU and allowing that additional lot coverage within it, you know, I think would spur at least a little bit of additional production on its own, which is the best of it. So thanks for this. I really do appreciate this.

Yeah, I think you can see, you know, Benville is literal. You know, you build the ADU, you're going to get the extra. And in Seattle and in Portland, it's more of a, you know, you get a percentage bump. And I think that's important to stimulate there. I wanted to bring up, you mentioned a couple things about here, some of the restrictions here. I've spoken to a couple different architects that are actually designing and building ADUs in the neighborhoods here. They had three issues that they identified that were fairly significant. One, I think, is being addressed in the ZTA, and that was having a greater setback on your rear yard setback for an ADU, which is now being eliminated. So the setback will be the same as any other building on the site. So that's a help. That improves one thing. The other one, they said, adds about 9% cost to the ADU, and that is required sprinkler system. and there were several sessions actually at the Congress for New Urbanism where this idea or the problem of actually having to build sprinkler systems into these units is a big cost burden. And in all of those sessions, someone usually came up and said, that it's been proven, and we would have to go through this with the fire department and so on, but it's been proven that as far as a life safety issue is concerned, having hot-wired smoke detectors is just as effective as sprinklers in saving lives. So that is a much greater reduction in cost if you didn't have to do sprinklers. The third one that they identified is essentially small house lots in our neighborhoods are basically being penalized if they want to build an ADU simply because they have a small house. There's a lot of houses in downtown Silver Spring that are anywhere from 900 to 1,100 square feet. If you are only allowed to build an ADU that is 50%, then at 900 square feet, you have a 450-foot floor plate. You're down to a little over 200 square feet for your ADU. And so that is an issue that they also identify.

The last one, it's going to get changed to 75%, which is better than 50%.

Yeah. Sorry, we are so long. But yeah, pegged to the size of the house itself, it still is restrictive. And not only Silver Spring, but places down county, Chevy J's small lot sizes and small houses that were originally built would not be conforming, actually, at this point. I can see that being an issue.

So how do we get this information out? Ms. Cavone, how often do we How often do we report on the ADUs? I'm just thinking in our next ADU report, can we?

So there's no ADU report.

Oh, I see.

OK. So the PHP community did take up access-free dwellings. They had the Department of Housing, Community Affairs, and DPS look at the broader issues. And they had national representatives come in and talk about the impediments. I think that this gives us a lot of food for thought. I think, unfortunately, we probably don't have the time to add these additional things. But we can come back next council. And the planning board can always request an introduction of a zoning tax amendment. So I think that one of the things we could do is, basically do this again, you know, talk about, you know, best practices in success-free dwelling units and see if there's an appetite for the planning board to kind of make a recommended zoning tax amendment.

Yeah, maybe that's what we put on the parking lot because with this information, maybe you can include this, you know, we've done this study, you know, we've done these other things and these are other jurisdictions and these are the impediments. We're only doing Really now, on average now, 30 units a year, 32 or three a year. And this is what other jurisdictions are doing. And those that look like us, they're doing more. And this is why we recommend this zoning.

CHRISTIE WOODARD- We do have a matrix that is attached to our staff report. So we will make sure that that is sent up, that will be sent up with our transmittal letter. We can also make sure that Mr. Mortensen's presentation is sent up with the transmittal so that the council And if they decide, you know, maybe their time that we don't know about, then, you know, we can certainly bring up that these issues can be brought up.

Yeah, I'm thinking about setting the stage for next year.

Yeah.

Okay, great. Thank you. This has been wonderful. Mr. Mortensen, thank you for putting this together and taking the time. And sorry you came at the end of the day, but thank you for hanging here with us. My pleasure. Yeah, so this ends our planning board meeting for today, and we will see you on the 11th. Was it 11th or next? June 11th, is it?

No.

June 2nd. And then we... June 4th. June 4th, that's right, and we skip the 11th, and then we... Yeah, June 4th. We'll see you on June 4th. Thank you. I know we...