Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good morning, everyone. It's June 25th, and we're starting our planning board meeting. I'm delighted to see so many people here today. Our first item this morning is 1A, adoption of resolutions. We have four. Mr. Bartley, you can't vote on either of these. And Mr. Hedrick, you can't vote on the last one. The first one is the Downtown Silver Spring Overlay Zone Civic Approvement Fund Rate Adjustment. The second is the 4702 Chevy Chase Drive Preliminary Plan Amendment. The third is 801 Raider Road. So we'll do these three, but Commissioner Bartley, you can't vote. So do I have a motion to approve these three resolutions? I'll move to approve the three resolutions.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. The 401. And the last one is the Persimmon Tree Lot 35 Block A Forest Conservation Plan Amendment, where staff is recommending approval. Do I have a motion for approval of Persimmon Tree Lot subdivision?

I move for the approval.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. So it's 3-0-2. Thank you. So the next is we have two subdivisions this morning. The first is subdivision plat number 220-260-240, Treville. And the second is subdivision plat 220-260-500 and 220-260-510, Willow Glen. Do I have a motion to approve these two record plats? I'll move to approve the record, please.

I second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. The ayes have it 5-0. And next we go to extensions. We have six extensions this morning. The first is the Popular Grove Sketch Plan Amendment, Preliminary Plan Amendment, Site Plan Extension Request Number 3. The second is River Road Estates Preliminary Plan This must be the first extension request on that one. And the third is only FSU site plan regulatory extension request number two. The fourth is Bennett Road properties extension request number five. The fifth is Sunina Properties Apartments extension request number three. And the sixth is Friendship Commons extension request number one. Do I have a motion for approval of these six extension requests? I'll move to approve the extension requests.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

The ayes have it, five to zero. And next we have our Park Director's Roundtable's report. Welcome, Director Figueredo. Looking forward to it.

Thank you, Chair Harris. I'm kind of excited about today's. I'm always excited about the director's report, but today I'm particularly excited. So I think you can imagine or you can see what it is that I'm going to talk about first. We had our annual Mudfest on June 13th at Woodstock Equestrian Park in Darnestown, and Dominique is running through some of the photos. You can see people having a really great time playing in the mud. We had 900 people attend. They played on a mudslide. They got absolutely filthy. A new feature this year is that they rigged a pump that they used to recycle the muddy water to power the slides so that they could conserve more water and keep the slides nice and slick so people slide down them in the messiest way possible. And here's somebody rinsing off. Thank goodness. I always worry about people, how they get back in their car and what their car looks like after this. I want to recognize Katrina Faust from Black Hill. This is an event that is jointly put on by Black Hill Discovery Center and Northern Parks. So this event, what I'm going to talk about now is something that I am so excited about, I can't even begin to tell you. Obviously, our summer camp program is in full swing for the summer. But this year, we offered something unique. First of its kind, an adult summer camp at Meadowside Nature Center. So from June 12 to June 14, our participants between the ages of 27 all the way up to 73 years old, had three full days of summer camp activities. They kayaked. They fished. They did rock climbing. They did nature photography. They had a campfire and barbecue, a cocktail hour, an escape room on the trails, an overnight camping experience. I'm so excited about this. I think you're all familiar with a lot of the discussion these days about the increasing problem of social isolation, young people not forming relationships in the way that generations past have, the after effects of COVID and work from home are increasingly keeping people from connecting with one another. And as you all know, part of our mission at PARCS is to bring people together, to bring them together outside. This is a program that I hope we will continue to build on and grow. One day, I would love to attend a wedding where two people who attended one of these summer camps met and later formed a permanent bond. And we know it was very successful. The participants Loved it so much that they have a number of them signed up for other programs, for volunteering. It was incredibly successful. And I want to acknowledge, because at Parks we have so many incredible staff, and they have so many ideas. So the idea for this came from Lucila Fernandez, who is our principal park naturalist at Meadowside. And she led the camp along with Jennifer Sims, I want to congratulate her for such a brilliant idea that is so in line with what the Parks Department is about. And I am very excited about continuing this. We received a grant recently from the Chesapeake Bay Trust for $100,000 that will fund a volunteer tree care program. It's going to cover supplies and staff time. It's going to be used to help the southern region mulch and care for parks, trees, beyond what is the normal tree protection period so that we can ensure a higher tree survival rate. You know, it's very important. And it's something that we measure and that we care about and we do very well. But this is going to allow us to kind of build on that with the support of volunteers. Pictured here, this is a group of volunteers from Marriott. And I guess that they helped us test out how the project would work. Again, I want to thank staff. Molly Gallant from our volunteer services office was the impetus behind the application and receipt of this grant. And you know we are looking for resources everywhere we can find them. And yesterday, yesterday was a beautiful day to cut a ribbon at a new Rock Spring Park. This park was built by Erickson Senior Living. It was part of their public benefit and open space requirements for their new Grandview Senior Living development. It's a multi-generational park. It's got swings and walking paths. It's got two playgrounds. It's got pretty amazing slides. You can see in the photo there that the designers of the park used the sort of topography and terrain to create kind of a a slide that feels very dramatic and steep. But it was safe. I tried it out. It was fantastic. And it was transferred, this park, after being built by the developer. was transferred over to the Parks Department for our long-term operations and management. And I want to say, I think of this as a really great example of the kinds of community benefits that come out of development in Montgomery County through the work of this agency in partnership with developers. Trail Crew. They recently installed a 70-foot-long fiberglass bridge. It's south of You can see there in that photo, the inset photo, that it's like a little baby bridge that's just south of the big mommy-daddy ICC bridge. And it replaces what had previously been a really difficult stream crossing. And you're going to see here a little bit of a video of the folks building the bridge. They previously had to navigate rocks if there was high water, if there was mud. It was a hard bridge crossing. It obviously will make the trail much more accessible to a wide variety of users, older people, equestrians. It's easier for the bicyclists to manage this. And it also reduces the environmental impacts from all of the previous crossings. We built it with durable materials. You know, this reflects our commitment to our natural surface trail program. We did receive the good news is this past cycle, the CIP cycle, we asked for an additional $300,000 a year in our natural surface trails PDF. And even though it was a difficult CIP year, the council gave us, we asked for $300,000 a year increase, and they gave us half that, $150,000 a year. We're going to use a lot of that to help fund the construction of bridges like this one. This bridge cost roughly about $100,000. So some of that, you can see that that funding is very much needed. And we're very grateful to have received it. It's in current revenue. And we are going to go about implementing it as quickly as we can. And this is a photo of the graduates this year, the Montgomery Parks graduates of our Communicating with Confidence program. This is a bi-county partnership with the Prince George's side of the agency. This year, we had 22 participants from Montgomery Parks. That was up from last year's number of 13. The idea of this is that this is a curriculum that is designed to help non-native English speakers build up their communication skills and their confidence. Obviously, they're focusing on operational terminology When you are learning another language, there are sometimes certain things that come easier to you than others, and certain things that are more important for you to learn. And obviously, we want our parks employees to be able to talk to their coworkers about the work they're doing. It's very tailored. They do an assessment at the outset of the program to kind of figure out where everybody is so that they can tailor the training to them. It runs for eight weeks, and it meets in person once a week, and we're just very proud of our graduates. This was the Parks Department's fourth year supporting the Scotland Juneteenth Heritage Festival. It's held at Cabin John Regional Park. It is put on by the Juneteenth Scotland Foundation. It originated, they were trying to raise money for the restoration of their church after it was damaged during flooding back in 2019. The event grows every year. It's really exciting and fun. This year at the kickoff, the governor attended. There was a 5K run. There was a Black History Month. mobile museum, there's fireworks, there's so much going on, carnival rides. And I will say, here's a picture of some of our many, many park staff who are deployed to help support this program on a holiday. So we are very grateful to them and love partnering with this community. It's a wonderful, very large event. And you may have asked yourself, who are all these young people in the hearing room today? Well, I'm going to tell you. We had the first of our two sessions of our Trail Ambassador Program start this week. This is our first cohort here. I'm going to tell you about some of the projects they'll be working on. They're going to do a watershed trash cleanup. They're going to install a bridge on the North Branch Trail. They're obviously going to do regular trail maintenance at Cabin John, Kengla, and Muddy Branch. They're going to do some work at the Wheaton Bike Park. And of course, we put them to work, but we also want them to have a great time so they get to spend some of their day every day exploring the trails on mountain bikes. So I want to see, Todd, if you could have our young folks come up and just quickly introduce themselves and maybe mention something that they're looking forward to doing during their participation in this program.

Absolutely. Thank you very much, Mitty. Thank you all, members of the planning board. Really appreciate this opportunity. As Mitty mentioned, this is our 2026 class of trail ambassadors, and I'm just going to let them tell you a little bit about themselves, introduce themselves to you all.

Hi, I'm Jake. I go to private school in Rockville, Berman. And I really just enjoyed biking rides that we've done this week and just overall work. And I love helping out the community, and it's really nice.

Hello, my name is Paige, and I go to Seneca Valley High School. One thing that I really enjoyed was picking up trash at a lake yesterday. We were very productive. We got a lot of trash, and I feel like we made a big difference.

My name is Aisha. I go to Montgomery Blair High School, and I really enjoyed interacting with the wildlife yesterday. We got to see a lot of frogs and crabs and stuff like that.

I'm Reed. I go to Richard Montgomery High School, and I've really enjoyed just technical drills and working with the mountain bikes throughout the program so far.

My name's James. I go to Northwood High School, and it's been fun doing some of the trail maintenance stuff, like the watershed cleanup that we did.

I'm Gordy. I go to Wheaton High School. And I've been having a lot of fun riding the bikes, but also I'm really looking forward to working on the trails that I ride so that everybody can enjoy them. My name is Klaus. I go to Paint Branch High School. And what I've enjoyed is just being out there in the forest and stuff and stopping at streams and just being out there and looking around.

As Romeo, I go to Paint Branch as well. What I enjoyed was just hanging out with everybody here and also checking out the new places and new trails.

Hello, my name is Jeremy, and I go to John F. Kennedy High School. And one thing I enjoy is going out and exploring new places that I don't know about.

My name is Travis. I go to Moray School, and I enjoyed cleaning up the pond yesterday and seeing how much trash we were able to get out of it.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. I hope you all have a wonderful time in the program this summer. And remember, you have your whole life ahead of you. You don't have to decide anytime soon what you want to pursue as a career. But some people get to work outdoors for a living building trails and don't count out a career in parks. And with that. Oh, and we want you all to come up, and we're going to all take a picture.

One, but before you come up, I just want to say, if this is also the end of your presentation, is it? Okay. Yeah, so, yeah, I'm just sort of, Boris, can you just say one quick thing? Yes, this is wonderful. Thank you, Mitty, for giving us an update on all the wonderful things that Parks does. What really... resonate to me, all of it resonates, but to the, you know, the communicating with confidence, you know, building skills for our employees and not only for them with us, but, you know, as they throughout life. And so, and then also the Trail Ambassadors Program, you know, thank you for volunteering for that. You know, it's such a wonderful program to see you actively engage in outdoor activities and learning more about our park system. So thank you for participating. I, you know, it just, you know, It's so heartfelt to see you guys out there. Thank you. Any other comments from the board?

Yeah, I just want to say that it is so wonderful to see you guys here. Thank you for bringing them here to share it with us. Congratulations, and thank you. for being here and spending time in the parks and doing the community some good. We really appreciate. And you know I love the bridges, so I'm very interested to see, is that really our own people that they set up the bridge, or did we have contractors to do that?

You can see Bob Turnbull out there. Bob, did you do that?

Nodding. Oh, my God. I'm very proud. That's wonderful. That's wonderful. Great job. That's a lot of saving in cost saving for us to do that. And the price is unbelievable. Now that everything goes up, you could see something that is so effective and works that way. Congratulations to all of you. Thank you.

Love that time-lapse video. That was really cool. Yeah, I did.

It was great. I'm sure that Bob had something to do with it.

You know that you're just talking yourself into more work, right? Like, you can put a bridge up and now, you know. And I just wanted to add, I really appreciate the Trail Ambassadors program. My oldest is already looking into it, and she's just 12, so she's really excited about it. And I enjoyed trying to match all of y'all with the picture when you all have your helmets on, which is a really fun thing to try to do, is who is who. Everybody's bicycle helmet. Thanks for being here today, guys. We really appreciate it.

Yeah, just add my thanks, and thanks for being here. Hope you guys, hope you all have a really fun summer. And I don't know if you were into mountain biking before you got into this program, if you're just getting into it now, but we have some of the best trails for mountain biking in the whole region, as you probably now know. So I hope you all enjoy that, too.

Congratulations on being part of the program. You're very fortunate, and I look forward to all the exciting things that you continue to accomplish. And then I'd also like to compliment Ms. Figueredo on the presentation. The pictures that you shared during these presentations are very powerful, and it displays the excellent work that the parks do for the community and engaging the community. And the photographs are amazing. Thanks.

Thank you for saying that. We do have great parks photographers. Thank you.

Okay, great. We'll take a break while we take this picture with our park ambassadors, and then we'll come back with our next item, item number five. And welcome back. We're on item number 514522 Jones Lane Administrative Subdivision and Forest Conservation Plan, where staff is recommending approval with conditions. And this morning, we have Adam Bossie with the Planning Department presenting this item. Welcome.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, members of the Planning Board. Again, just for the record, Adam Bossie with the West County Planning Division. Also here in the audience today are the project's Transportation Reviewer, Ms. Leah Daniels, and the project's Environmental Reviewer, Mr. Marco Fuster. So this project is located at 14522 Jones Lane. This is in the Darnestown, North Potomac area in the Potomac Subregion Master Plan area. The property itself and those around it are in the R200 zone. The property itself is a 2.12-acre unrecorded tract of land that has a flaglot configuration to it. That's a property with a narrow strip providing access to a public street where the bulk of the property contains no frontage. And that configuration is why this application is in front of you today. The subdivision regulations stipulate that only the planning board can approve a subdivision with a flaglot. The property itself is undeveloped, and the western third of it includes overlapping protected environmental resources consisting of a stream, stream valley buffer, steep slopes, highly erodible soil, and forested areas. Some existing conditions images of the property. Photo number one here shows the existing access point from Jones Lane that's flanked by mature trees on either side, and there's some remnant driveway located there. Photo number two in the top right of the slide is the approximate general area of where the new single family house is proposed to be, which we'll see in the upcoming slide. And photo three on the bottom is a snapshot of the stream channel that's down there. And there is some debris in that channel, which is shown here. And that's something else that the application proposes to tend to, which I'll speak to more in a second. So the proposal itself, the administrative subdivision, proposes to create a single recordable lot from the existing tract of land to support the development of one new single-family dwelling. In concert with the Forest Conservation Plan, the applications provide significant and appropriate ecological improvements and conservation measures for the on-site stream, forest slopes, and vegetation. Looking at the annotated plan here and speaking to those conservation measures, forest and stream buffer are to be placed in a conservation easement, which is shown in dark green here. That's on the western third of the property. To the east of that, a 325-foot rear setback is extending from that far western property line, and that will functionally limit development of any accessory site features in an area of steep slopes. That's just outside of that conservation easement, so that grabs a little bit more environmental protection there. Toward the middle of the property, we see the location of the house and septic area. Those are essentially as far as they can be from the environmental features on site. And the location of the house is well over the minimum building separation requirements for flag lots. It's 80 feet, so there's more separation than that provided. The driveway that we see connecting to Jones Lane does meander a bit to limit root zone impacts to those mature trees that flank the driveway. And it's a little hard to see on the image here, but there are frontage improvements provided along Jones Lane consisting of a side path and drainage swale. And these are required to be constructed and less waived by DPS at the time of permitting. The forest conservation plan, all of the forest conservation requirements are being met on site with this application. Category 1 conservation easement, again, is shown on the western third of the property. This easement itself is going to encompass an area of about 0.82 acres, I believe it is. The easement's also going to abut an existing forest conservation easement on the property to the south, so we'll get about a two-acre area of protected stream valley buffer and forested area that's contiguous here now. The FCP is also going to provide for reforestation, invasive species management in the forest and stream buffer, and is going to provide for debris removal from the stream itself. The FCP also accounts for impacts to root zones of two specimen trees that we see on the far right of the image here. Those are adjacent to the proposed driveway. And again, you can see where the driveway is meandering to be as far as possible on the property from those trees to limit that impact. Regarding community outreach, those requirements have been satisfied. Notices were mailed. The property was posted. We did receive questions from one abutter during the review. Those were answered by a phone call, and we did share contact information for the DPS septic reviewer that's assigned to the project. So in summary, staff is happy to report that we believe these applications satisfy the applicable requirements of the subdivision ordinance, zoning ordinance, and the forest conservation law as applicable, as well as substantially conform with the 2010 Potomac sub-region master plan as conditioned in the staff report. With that, staff is recommending approval with conditions of the administrative subdivision plan and approval with conditions of the forest conservation plan. Each of those items will require a separate motion and vote by the board. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bossie, for your detailed report. We have one person, Joseph Jurgina, to provide public testimony this morning. Welcome, Mr. Jurgina. You have three minutes.

Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to address the board. My name again is Joseph Jurgeney. My property is 14520. I'm bordered on two sides by the applicant's property. My property is the small white square between Jones Lane. My septic system was installed around 1999, 2000. It does not appear on the county records. It's an older anaerobic style system. Since this is the point of subdivision, I think this is the only opportunity to bring this up. I do not have the provision for a backup or a tertiary backup septic system as the current code requires. In addition, the property has no provision for sewer resulting in a field failure would cause the field to have to be dug up and disposed of as toxic waste to create expense financially and environmentally. also the risk to the applicant's proposed dwelling as this down downhill from my leach field these items concern me um i believe there are several opportunities to bring the properties up to code and protect the environment and limit the risk the first option is granting my parcel additional 50 feet in depth at its current width and granting the applicant the same on the other side of his property taken from the forest easement, but based on your description that you just gave, that may or may not be possible to work out. I think both properties can be brought close to compliance with minimal environmental impact. And that's really all I have. Can you answer any questions?

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Jagina. I don't quite understand what, maybe the staff can, on a graph, point out his property and his concerns and how they impact this project. Yeah, thank you.

For the record, Amy Lindsay, Environment and Climate Regulatory Supervisor. So what he's talking about is any time you have a septic area, there's always an initial set of septic lines and then usually a set of secondary and tertiary lines. To make certain this doesn't happen, that if the initial lines fail or are filled, that there is acceptable amount to expand it a lot of times those aren't cleared at that time they're just sort of left there but we make certain that nothing is built over them so in this case what is being shown is is a a modern septic area with the initial lines and the backup lines. As to the speaker's case, I don't know. But certainly, if there was an issue, We would be happy to, working with well and septic, counting well and septic, and also we would be happy to look at the forest conservation area because we do not want failing septic fields. That is absolutely imperative. But what's in front of you today does meet all modern code.

For this property?

Yes, for this property. For his property, that's not in front of us.

OK. So Mr. Jurgina, we will send you our contact or something. And we will give you a number to call. What would you recommend, staff?

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chairman. So Mr. Juronga and I did speak during the process. This is the person who did reach out with questions. And if I'm understanding him correctly, I think this is basically where our conversation left off before. He has concerns his property is the one located between this flag lot and Jones Lane. It's a smaller property than others in the area. He is on his own septic system, and I believe his concern is with his septic system and having limited space to replace it on his own property. I see. So that's why I did provide that information for the septic reviewer for... for this case, the Jones Lane application, because they are familiar with that area and familiar with this application and, again, just the neighborhood generally. So I thought that they could better help him look at his septic issues.

And just to clarify, Elsa Heisel-McCoy, Chief, West County Planning for the Record. So this is something that the commenter would need to work with the applicant on as a separate matter. So we're not looking at that particular issue.

I understand. I just wanted to understand the issue.

And to clarify, so we reviewed the septic plans that are provided for the applicant that's West, if I'm orienting myself appropriately. To the west of them, the flag lot comes around. There's concern. And at the point of approval of permits and everything for the septic, they'll look directly at its effect on Mr. Juergen and his property there. That'll be taken into consideration with that.

So it's the Department of Permitting Services while on septic team that ultimately reviews and approves the septic plans? Yeah. For the purposes of this administrative subdivision, the applicant needs to show the septic area, which they have, and that area has been PERC tested. DPS reviewed that. The detailed septic plans are required prior to platting of this. The platting of it. So that's when the applicant's engineer will work with DPS to design the system for the 14522 property that we're talking about. Okay. I think Mr. Jurunga's property and his septic system is a separate issue that's kind of outside of the subdivision regulations as they pertain to this property.

Yeah, that was a certain issue. We'll get a detailed thing on the septic system for the applicant that will ensure that it meets required standards. It's been PERT tested, all that kind of stuff. Mr. Jurunga can work with DPS on any issues he has on his property, but our permitting systems will go in and make sure that the system that's going into the applicants won't have any impact on Or we'll meet the requirements that have no impact.

Let me just say that, because I know that. The septic area that they're showing is already approved by DPS as the concept. They have approved that this is based on the number of the bedrooms that is proposed. This area is already approved by DPS, and then the design of it would be when they get the permit.

That's what I was saying. We've approved design, placement, location, size. It's in the right time of soil, that kind of thing. The design of the actual system that will go in will have to be, will go through another permitting process to ensure that there's no contamination.

It's already decided it's the right soil. They should have done that, yeah.

Yes, that's what I'm saying. There's another bite at the apple for Mr. Juergen for concerns about anything that he has. The permitting service will do a detailed review of the actual system that goes in. When it's permitted. That's correct. This is the right place to put it.

But I'm not concerned with his septic system. His is mine. The fact is that mine is not up to code, current code, and we're subdividing the lots that were never subdivided properly. And I have no backup system. My system fails. It's on me to replace it and have it removed as toxic waste. That's going to be cost prohibitive, which would condemn my lot.

Yeah.

And that house is sited on top of where that backup field would go.

Mm-hmm. Yep. So what I think when, just I'm going to ask one more question. When DPS looks at this and saying this is the right place for the current applicant septic field, are they evaluating what's all around it?

No. OK. OK. And they're not supposed to.

OK.

This issue that he's talking about is totally separate than what is out in here. And here, the applicant has brought us something that is already approved by DPS for this. But I do not know how and what this Mr. Jonga property has been divided like that. Maybe they couldn't have built that house for that septic. So I don't know what has happened. But that is not in front of us. That's totally something different.

I understand. I understand.

So I don't know why it's being brought here.

Let's keep moving here. So thank you for your concern, Mr. Georgina. Please speak with DPS, OK? And my last question before we, I'm in support of this project. It was that you said the lot was never platted, just out of curiosity. So is the owner of the lot today is the same as the applicant or different?

That's correct. Yeah, the applicant is Mr. Seaborn. He owns the property. It's an unrecorded tract of land. It was just never previously platted, never previously developed with a house. He's purchased it and would like to do those things.

Okay. So it had a meets and balances, but it was not platted, but it's a legal lot. You could sell it, whatever, but it just wasn't.

It's a parcel of land, a tract of land. It wouldn't be a lot until it's recorded, but it had been transferred by deed over time. I see. I see. OK.

So to that point, nothing about the boundaries have changed with this subdivision. This is the boundaries for?

That's correct. All of the property's characteristics, the boundaries are all remaining as they were. This process just formalizes the, recordability of the lot so that the applicant can go ahead and plot it and then be issued building permits to build their home and septic system.

OK. All right. I have no other further questions or comments. Any other questions or comments from the board? No. So we have to make two. Can you go back to your final slide about the, so one is to approve the administrative subdivision, correct? Do I have a motion to approve? The administrative subdivision for Jones Lane, property 14522 Jones Lane. I'll move to approve the administrative subdivision.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. The ayes have it. 5-0. Do I have a motion to approve the forest conservation plan where staff is recommending approval with conditions?

I'll move to approve the forest conservation plan. Second.

All in favor? Aye. The ayes have it. Thank you so much and thank you for staff taking our questions. It's a learning experience. We already voted, but are there many lots that don't have flats in the county?

There are many lots in the county that are not recorded but have been transferred by deed over time, yes.

Can I just say something? I learned that recently, that up to 1975, the requirement of platting was not required. So everything was done as a parcel, and platting was not then required. At 1975, then county required that any land transfer or construction has to be plotted and be on a plot. So DPS checks on that and doesn't issue any permit unless that parcel is plotted. So everybody has to go through this process. So probably this land has been sitting there before 1975. And now that they want to build something, if it was before that, they could do it. But now they cannot. They have to plot it.

Thank you. Thank you. So we're just going to take one minute to turn over to the next project, which is item number 15, Clarksburg Town Center Preliminary Plan Amendment, where staff is recommending approval with conditions. Thank you. Welcome back. We're on item number 15, the Clarksburg Town Center Preliminary Plan Amendment, where staff is recommending approval with conditions. And this morning, we have Jonathan Casey with the Planning Department presenting this item. Welcome.

Good morning. As the chair stated, I'm Jonathan Casey with Up County Planning. This is Clarksburg Town Center Preliminary Plan Amendment 11995042G. Staff is recommending approval with conditions of the preliminary plan amendment with conditions twice here, just very limited conditions. One point of clarification, page 10 of the staff report does say that the applicant is seeking two waivers. That is incorrect. They're only seeking one waiver for the cap of 12 years for APF validity. This is Clarksburg Center, the overall project in purple. It's north of Stringtown Road and east of I-270. The property is zoned CRT now. When the original application came in, it was zoned RMX2. As far as existing conditions go, as I mentioned, the The Clarksburg Town Center is in the overall red area. And this application is really focused on the area in Goldenrod. But as you can tell, the majority of this project has already been built out with all the residential components. So now we are focusing on the commercial mixed-use core. is requesting an extension of the APF validity period of one year until March 26, 2030. They're also requesting a waiver of one of the limitations in the subdivision regulations that limits APF to 12 years. And just to give you an idea of what has already been approved out here, this is the most recent amendment that included a mix of uses. We have two apartment buildings, as well as a grocery store, which we now know will be a Weiss, as well as commercial and retail that run along this Spine Street, which is the main street. The only thing that's not shown is the most recent application, which is for the filling the board recently saw, and that will be located in this area here. With regard to the APF extension, there are criteria and subdivision regulations that essentially the applicant has to meet in order to grant an APF extension. The parameters are amount of development that's already been constructed within the overall area. And the applicant has met all of those criteria. As the waiver goes, I'm not going to dig into great detail here. But the subdivision regulations do limit APF to 12 years from the date of the original APF expiration. Granted, this application has been going on for quite some time, and it has faced a number of challenges over the years. This applicant is trying to essentially fulfill the vision of Clarksburg Town Center, and they are meeting the intent of the subdivision regulations, and there's additional justification for the waiver. Staff believes they have had a practical difficulty for a number of reasons, financing as well as simply trying to get a grocery store to fill the grocery store space because that is the anchor for the rest of this mixed-use core. And since they have done that, they are now moving forward with the rest of the development And they do have permits submitted to DPS for a number of the other buildings in that area. was reviewed. The subdivision regulations required a new school adequacy test, as well as traffic analysis. They're exempt from LATR. In conclusion, staff recommends the Planning Board approve preliminary plan 11995042G and the associated waiver with conditions.

Would the applicant like to make a presentation?

No presentation today. Good morning, Chair Harris and members of the Planning Board. For the record, Vince Biasi with the law firm of Lurcherley & Brewer. With me here today is Kate Kubit of Elm Street Development on behalf of the applicant. we'd like to thank Mr. Casey and planning staff for their thorough review and coordination throughout the development review process. We're excited to move forward with the build-out of the Clarksburg Town Center and realize this long-standing vision for this retail core and the master plan. So with that, we would respectfully request that the Planning Board approve Preliminary Plan Amendment 11995042G, and we are available for any questions that you may have.

Well, great. Well, thank you for your perseverance and moving this project forward. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, it's important, as you talk about, to achieve the vision, and you're really working really hard on that. My question is that, so what is, what do you year so that, to make sure you have... Everything is constructed before the end of the APF period, right? Because the APF means everything has to be built and operated by the time of the, or how does that work, just out of curiosity?

So the first step is recording your record plots, and they have already validated their preliminary plan by recording plots. The next step is pulling building permits, and they need to do so within the APF period.

Okay, great. And could you give us a sense of You know, what are your plans between now and, you know, what you think will be under construction or break ground or pull permits? Just out of curiosity, you know.

No, it's a great question. Thank you very much, Chair and the rest of the planning board. For the record, my name is Kate Cubitt. I'm with Elm Street Development. We appreciate staff's work on this and collaboration on this. This does provide an extra cushion for us, and there's a couple little gnarly parts of this project which would require an extra cushion, possibly. In the meantime, however, we are moving forward with the project and getting key components of this done. We are doing land development as we speak right now. So if you went out there, you'd see them moving dirt around, putting in storm drain, things like that. And we are, in simultaneous to that, submitting for building permits. So the Weiss grocery store is in for a permit. as well as some of the other retail buildings and the multifamily buildings. It's just some of the external macroeconomic and some of the other factors with some of the buildings that we are requesting this extra time. But in the meantime, everything else that we can move forward is moving forward because there's Everybody, as we know, is anxious to kind of see this finished.

OK, thank you so much. I have no further questions. Any questions or comments from the board? So we need one motion to, is there a motion to approve the, and then we need, we can include the Forest Conservation Plan, or just the, no, no, I'm sorry. I'm looking at something different. OK, just a preliminary plan amendment. So I have a motion to approve. approve the preliminary plan amendment for the Clarksburg Town Center.

Go ahead.

Where staff is recommending approval with conditions. Go ahead and move to approve the preliminary plan amendment with conditions from staff.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. The ayes have it. 5-0. Thank you so much. We'll take a two-minute break and then start with our next item. Just go year 27, annual school tests and school utilization report. Thank you. Good morning and welcome back. We're on item number 16, the fiscal year 2027 annual school test and school utilization report, where staff is recommending that we certify, the board certifies the results of the school annual test and that will take effect July 1st, 2026. And this morning we have Heisu Beck with the planning department presenting this item. Thank you.

Thank you. Good morning, board members. For the record, I'm Hei-Soo Baek from the Design, Placemaking, and Policy Division. And I'll be going over the FY2027 annual school test and school utilization report with you today. Here's the order of the presentation today, just going from the annual school test, a few steps in it, and then the school utilization report, and then to the board certification. Before we jump into the annual school test results, the background comes from the county code 50.4.3.J that says the board may only approve a preliminary plan when it finds that public facilities will be adequate to support and service the subdivision. So under the growth and infrastructure policy, the annual school test is what establishes the adequacy status of the county's public schools to direct the conditions of approval that the board would require for residential development applications throughout the fiscal year. So today we'll be reviewing the results of the FY2027 results that'll take effect on July 1st once it's certified. So the annual school test evaluates the capacity adequacy of MCPS's elementary, middle, and high school facilities for four years in the future based on MCPS's official CIP projections. The four-year timeframe factors in the rough amount of time it would take for on average to be ready for occupancy after being approved. So that means for the FY2027 test, we're looking at projections for the 2030 to 2031 school year. So this graph here shows exactly how the test evaluates each school. The horizontal axis on the bottom marks the utilization rate thresholds, which is 105% for a Tier 1 UPP, 120% for Tier 2, and 135% for Tier 3, respectively. The vertical axis shows the seat deficit thresholds that together decide whether a school gets placed in which tier zone. If you see in the middle where the tier two thresholds are, these are based on MCPS's CIP guidelines for when a classroom addition would be considered in the last year of a CIP. Our growth and infrastructure policy requires a UPP to kick in one year earlier, so not the last year of the CIP, but the year before.

And for tier one,

I think this is better. Okay. So our growth and infrastructure policy requires the UPP to kick in one year earlier, and it starts at 80% of MCPS's thresholds for Tier 1. We'll use a hypothetical example to see how this works for a specific school. Again, this is a hypothetical school for an elementary school. If it has a utilization rate of 125% and the seat deficit shows to be 90%, Then the school service area will fall right here in the yellow tier one UPP zone on the graph. As you can see, the utilization rate is already above the 120% threshold. for a tier two. But the seat deficit was just two away from the 92 seat threshold. So the annual school test will place the school service area in a tier one UPP by default and will list its adequacy ceiling as two seats to a tier two UPP. And then during development review throughout the fiscal year, if an application proposes residential development with an elementary school enrollment impact that's larger than the two seats that's left, their UPP will be adjusted higher in proportion to the number of students that go past the two-seat ceiling. So let's say the project's estimated to have 10 elementary school students, then their UPP rate would be adjusted to reflect the two students that are counted in the Tier 1 zone, but then adjusted higher for the eight students that are counted in the Tier 2 zone. So it would be 0.2 of a Tier 1 rate and 0.8 of a Tier 2 rate. It would be the sum of that. This slide shows a list of MCPS's capital planning decisions that are scheduled to be complete by 2030, which is the year that we're testing. Group of projects are all related to the recent boundary change that was adopted by the Board of Education. The capital projects at Woodward, Northwood, and the Crown Farms site for Rooton High School will be complete by 2027. And the capacities will be increased as they're listed here. So those are the capacities that are captured in the annual school test. The Damascus High School project, however, won't be finished until one year later in 2031. So their additional capacity isn't captured in this test yet. More importantly, though, the new middle school and high school boundaries will start taking effect in 2027. So although the current boundaries haven't changed, the annual school test results will be applied to the new school boundaries starting this fiscal year. These additional projects listed on the bottom bullet will be completed by 2030, and their increased capacities are also captured in the FY27 test. So now looking at the school test results in terms of UPP tier placements, these are the high schools that are placed in a UPP tier by default. So Blake High School and Churchill High School are placed in a Tier 1 UPP throughout the fiscal year. Middle school level, Francis Scott Key is the only school that will be placed in a Tier 1 UPP. Elementary school level, we have a few more. Cashel Elementary School will be placed in a Tier 1. Burning Tree and Cabin Branch will be placed in Tier 2. And Mill Creek Town will be placed in a Tier 3.

Can I ask a quick question on the Tier 3 school, on the elementary? I think I know the answer to this. is that that's not largely because of population increase or development. That's overcrowding of the school that's existing for that elementary. I don't think we've had anything in there that would

Throughout the eight years, I guess not quite eight years yet, that we've had the growth in infrastructure policy, that school has been in the tier three. But I can't recall seeing a single development application come in.

That's what I thought. Just to make it clear that the issue is mostly boundaries and not development. Just want to make sure we get that out there. But yeah, that one's been in the tier three since we've been doing this. I've thought it several times, if I remember correctly. And nobody has built anything. that would be in that catchment area. So a point to make that it's a boundary issue primarily, not a development one.

Not that we are here. Could you explain how you calculate utilization rate? I forgot. Sorry.

Oh, it's simply dividing the enrollment projections by the capacity that's scheduled for that year.

So is that done on a yearly basis, or is it following the same cycle?

Yes, MCPS renews their projections every year. So even for the same, let's say, 2030, last year's projections for 2030 and this year's projections for 2030 slightly differ because they base their projections on that year.

specific school years enrollment that they see and then calculate the next five six years accordingly one one other observation just to build off of what commissioner hedrick was saying but if you look at um the placement of all of these um catchment areas at least on the elementary school level, they are all in the turnover impact area, right? And not the infill impact area. Basically meaning areas where we're looking, where we have and would look to see more infill development, particularly multifamily and various types like that. So it's just interesting and reinforces the point that it's turnover and not development and boundary issues are driving these particular areas.

And I think we've seen Burning Tree in the last few times as well. It's also been in this thing. I can't remember anything from there. You can see on the map. These are not places where we've approved development sites. This is not Germantown. This is not Clarksburg. There's a turnover area.

Yeah, it is turnover, but that's very interesting. I'm just wondering that could it be that we have the infill area with multifamily building, that that's the point of attention, focus that we have right now, but eventually people that they are in this multifamily buildings, they want to move out to other areas. And that turnover is the one that actually could impact these areas. I don't know. I'm just asking this question because You could see that people that they want to have children and family and pets, eventually they want to move out to something that gives them some more space. And that's what most of the time people that are turning over are people with the children. And that's why. Because I remember that this is not a new thing. This has always been a case, that the turnover create more school impact than the new in-field construction. I remember that from five, six years ago, and it still is true.

As I've said many times before, I'm the problem. I bought a house from a woman who was in her 70s who retired in North Carolina, and I immediately had three children. I will be a burden on the MCPS school system for the next 20-some odd years. But new construction isn't the problem. And these are not happening in areas where we are authorizing or allowing for new construction. Whereas what's happening is in places where People age. Other people buy their homes because they're long-term durable economic products. And our focus seems to largely be on our concern with new development when the problem is not new development. And the problem is existing single-family homes that are bought by people that want to have families. Yes. I came from, at the time, DC. People come from all over where there's available things. But I couldn't buy my house here now is one of the issues that we're having. I would not live in Montgomery County where I'm living here now. I wouldn't be able to afford it. My house costs 50% more than it did when I bought it. So we're getting turnover from other areas, but more wealthier areas. And that's what's causing our issues. So anyway, not to belabor the point, but this is a boundary issue, not a development issue.

I'll just add one thing to that. So the challenge with turnover, enrollment impact from turnover, is that it fluctuates a lot throughout the years, whereas the infill type of enrollment, where it comes from largely multifamily development, it's more constant. So turnover areas will not only see overutilization, will quickly see underutilization in the exact same school areas, not too far down the road.

I'm not going anywhere after they're done with school. I will sit in that house until I die.

Please continue. And we can catch up.

So these UPP tier placements dictate the default surcharge factor to apply to a project's school impact tax rate. But because school impact tax is paid at the time of building permit, the actual amount that is charged for a UPP condition is assessed at that time, too. and it depends on the impact tax rate of that fiscal year. Just for reference, this table shows how much a Tier 1 UPP at the elementary school level will cost if an applicant pulls a building permit now. It's unlikely that... review applicant that is getting approved in the next fiscal year will be coming for building permit within the same fiscal year and pulling these building permits but it just gives an idea of how much it would be and it'll probably just increase from here for every recalculation that happens every two years and just to clarify for the multi-family on this chart that's a per unit cost Correct. Everything is per unit.

Per unit, yeah. And another quick question just based on your point. I know we've talked about this one before, so I apologize. I just don't remember, unfortunately. But applicants that go through, they get entitled. Beholden to the rates at the time of entitlement? No, it's at the time of pulling the building permit. So, okay. Okay. Got it. Yeah, thanks.

Keep note of from the annual school test results is what's called the adequacy ceilings, which we briefly went over in the hypothetical example. But the UPP surcharge factors, again, can get adjusted higher than what the default UPP tier placements indicate during development review. This happens, again, when a project's estimated enrollment impact, which pretty much is the number of students that will likely come from the proposed units in an average year, is higher than the adequacy ceiling of a school. So the schools here have adequacy ceilings that are less than 10 seats from the FY2027 test. That means if there's a large enough project that these schools have a higher chance of a UPP rate in the next year getting triggered. And the default UPP tier placements and all of the adequacy ceilings for every individual school is included in this annual school test results table, which are all posted with the staff report as attachment A. We'll go over the FY2027 school utilization report, which provides supplemental information about the county's public school infrastructure that the annual school test alone doesn't capture. The report typically consists of a countywide and an individual school component, but this year there was some delay in receiving data from MCPS because of the latest boundary change. So the individual school component wasn't isn't posted yet. But we will be posting that on the planning department's annual school test web page in the next few weeks. We'll go over the countywide component of the report as we usually do. And here's the trend graph that is pretty familiar. If you've been remembering all the annual school test reviews from the past few years. But just to go over it again, the light blue bars here show enrollment. The dark blue, almost black bars show the capacity for each year. And the red lines are the utilization rates, again, which is dividing pretty much the light blue by the dark blue. The first graph we're seeing on this slide is showing the county's high school level enrollment projections. and projections, so the past 15-year enrollment trends and the next six-year projections. As you can see, the enrollment growth started becoming noticeable around 2014 here and started outpacing the county's total capacity by 2017. the past decade, but then it reaches a peak in 2023 and then looks like it started declining. And since its peak, the countywide high school enrollment has declined by 2.4% in the past couple years. And if we start looking at the projections in these striped areas, the county will start seeing a major surplus of high school capacity in 2027 with all those capital projects being complete. And by 2031, MCPS is projecting that there will be over 4,900 surplus seats available.

So because this is, we've talked about this a lot in the past, but because this is sort of a cohort view of elementary school enrollment leads to middle, leads to high school, and so on. Do we, with the recent drop-off, do we think that that is mostly slightly lower middle school enrollment, or is it a slightly lower continuation rate from middle school to high school? Like, are we seeing sort of more drop-off from middle school to high school recently, or are there just fewer middle school students in general?

We'll be seeing the middle school and elementary school graphs in the next few slides. But at the elementary school level, the enrollment already peaked in 2017. Middle school peaked in 2019. It could have been accelerated a few years because of the pandemic. But you could tell because elementary school peaked in 2017, it was coming. So you could probably translate that into it's about time that the high school projections would peak. It's probably hard to tell exactly when it would peak from MCPS's perspective, but it was coming, and not just because of the pandemic, because elementary school peaked before the pandemic.

Yeah, okay, thanks.

So this graph now, we look from top to bottom, and it shows how many high schools were operating at each utilization rate level over the past 15 years, again, at the top part, and the next six years at the bottom striped area. So the green parts in the middle shows the share of schools that were operating within a fairly healthy 90% to 105% utilization range. The warmer the color gets to the right shows schools that are overutilized. The cooler the colors get to the left, there's only a couple dark blues here, shows schools that are underutilized. For reference, MCPS considers a utilization rate between 80 and 100% as efficient. And that rate falls within the blue and green blocks with a bit of extra, I guess, room on each side. And we can see down here in the projections, once the boundary change goes into effect in 2027, most of the high schools will be in the blue or green zones. So now this map is showing the last bar, which was the 2031 school year, showing each high school service area with the same color utilization level that was marked on in the graph. We can see that four schools will be utilized at 105% or above. This is a little different from the annual school test results because, number one, it's not factoring in the seat deficit thresholds. There are some schools that are above the utilization level thresholds, but didn't meet the seat deficit thresholds for the annual school test. And the other thing is, this is showing one year after the year that the FY2027 test evaluates. Here's the graph for the middle school level. You can see the countywide enrollment peaked in 2019. and has declined by 6.8% since then. And MCPS is projecting that there will be over 7,100 surplus seats available by 2031, which amounts to 18% of the county's total capacity. Look at individual schools and how their utilization rates are balanced or distributed across. Overall, throughout the years, there has been more middle schools that were underutilized in the dark blue and blue than overutilized, the ones in the yellow and orange on this side. The boundary change in 2027 will initially put more schools in green But it also increases the dark blue area as well, which is showing schools that are pretty underutilized. So MCPS has communicated that they'll review the middle school utilization levels again. They may review the utilization levels again for middle schools while they're doing the countywide elementary boundary study.

It is interesting looking through, related to this point, like looking through the chart that's in the staff report, kind of, it is a huge range. Like there are middle schools with, there's one with 45% utilization projected and two within the 50s. And, you know, it's not like huge numbers at that level, but. you know, it clearly is sending signals for the need for some, you know, boundary adjustments, which, you know, I'm glad that kind of we're following the data in that sense, we in the broad sense, like the, you know, school system. That's, I'm sorry, that's it.

Here is a map showing the 2031 school year and how the schools are going to be utilized. So three of the 40 schools are going to be above 150%. I'm sorry, under 5%. And nine are going to be at less than 75% in the darkest blue areas. In the map, you can see that the yellow and dark blues are, number one, scattered around in the county. And a lot of them are actually touching each other. Now at the elementary school level, we see that the countywide enrollment peaked in 2017 all the way back here. And it's been declining steadily since then. I mean, there's a sudden drop in 2019 or 2020 because of the pandemic, but it's still continuing on the downward trajectory. And by 2025, the decline was at 9.4% since the peak. So the downward trend is expected to continue for the foreseeable future. And by 2031, MCPS is projecting that the countywide surplus will be over 13,300 seats. So here's the utilization rate distribution. See a beautiful, colorful graph that ranges from dark blue all the way over to red. It's as beautiful as it is. It just shows how imbalanced the elementary school utilization rates are throughout the years. And the projections for down here are showing that it's unlikely going to improve on its own in the foreseeable future. You can see the dark blue is increasing steadily, but the yellow, oranges, and reds are hardly budging in the projections.

Do we see clustering within the imbalance, particularly at the lower and higher, the extreme ends of the distribution? Basically, are we seeing elementary schools within the same high school? catchment area with similar utilization issues, or are we seeing disparities in utilization within a high school like catchment area?

I think the next slide will see the map. Of course. It kind of gives you, it doesn't show where the cluster boundaries are, but it clearly tells us where things are. Yeah, and I guess it's time to see the map. So here's the map showing for 2031. 13 schools are counted to be over 105%. So the yellows, oranges, and reds are counted in this 13. And 41 schools are in the dark blue, which are at less than 75% capacity utilization. So it's lower than MCPS's efficient utilization range. So going back to Commissioner Hedrick's point, I mean, there are some areas where we see a concentration of dark blue. But at the same time, they're pretty well scattered and mixed across the county. It's hard to really point to one area of the county being overutilized, another area being underutilized. They're all over the county. To address this, MCPS will soon be doing a countywide boundary study. to examine possible consolidations and boundary adjustments. Okay, so the last part of the countywide school utilization report is the housing sales analysis, where we summarize homes sold, built, and the total number of dwelling units by school service area. The school service areas listed here on the left are the top three at each school level that had the most single-family homes sold during 2025. This can help us understand areas where a lot of enrollment growth may be coming from turnover. Some of them are seeing a lot of development too, but this helps explain it's not just development that is increasing, that is causing the enrollment growth.

It would be interesting to see maybe for next year, a version of this that also highlights a few different categories of school areas, like those that are projected to be in the UPP tiers currently, those that have low utilization rates, just so we can see how like this housing analysis and particularly the turnover, particularly the sales data, how that relates to the projections on kind of both ends of the spectrum, because this is obviously a huge, this is really important and it's really interesting, but it would be cool to see that relationship maybe for next time.

We'll think about how best we could do that. OK. The image on the right is an excerpt from the high school service areas page of the school utilization report. So at the top, the graph on the top shows the housing sales with schools with the most sales listed from left to right. The middle graph is showing the number of new units built, but it includes teardown rebuilds. So some of the high school service areas probably didn't have new development, but more teardown rebuilds. And the bottom graph is showing the total number of dwelling units. The yellow is single family, detached and attached, and the dark brown is showing multifamily low and high rise units in each school service area. With all that being said, staff will recommend that the planning board certify the results of the FY2027 annual school test results. Once certified, these will take effect on July 1st and should remain effective, will remain effective throughout the fiscal year.

Thank you, Ms. Beck. A lot of analysis. Thank you for doing that. I just want a couple quick questions. One is, There were three developments on the same block in the same year. And does someone keep account of the I mean, like, is there, you know, and they come to the board and do an analysis and, you know, this will create this many and this will create, do you keep that running total so that you know when the next project comes in where it fits in?

So we do keep track of all the school adequacy report requests that come in and the enrollment impact estimate that was calculated. But we don't add them up and apply it to the next development application that comes in. Because number one, a lot of times, the earlier applications aren't necessarily built before the later applications. A lot of times, they're not even built. So for fairness reasons, it doesn't make sense to, I guess, incentivize developers to try to race to get the applications in when that doesn't mean that's how quickly they're going to build it as well. So each individual development application is tested with their own enrollment impact. So if there is an adequacy ceiling of seven, every single development application that comes in that fiscal year will be tested for that seven. We do have the number of the enrollment impacts estimated, and then once the projects are approved and they show up in the pipeline data, That would get reflected in MCPS's projections for the next school year, and the next annual school test should be reflecting what was approved the previous year.

Okay, great. And my last question is, I know a lot of work goes into this. Do you think this needs to be done every year, or could it be done like some of the things we do every four years? I mean, is it... the real bang for the buck to need to do this every year in your estimation?

I think because the projections are redone every year and quite often the projections themselves are what takes schools in and out of the utilization premium payment tiers. It does make sense because one school can be placed in a UPP tier for one year And it could probably be coming out of it due to its own enrollment projections going down the next year. But if it were placed in that for the one year that we did it and we're not looking at it again for the next three years, I think it's probably not making the most sense when we know the projections have changed.

Just to add to that, Chair Harris, I think particularly right now where MCPS is doing boundary studies, realigning capacity allocation, we are seeing this sort of downward trend of enrollment, we do think it's good to have the annual data. But maybe once if we see a more steady pattern emerge in the near future or the far future, it may be worth reconsidering the timing of it. I will also mention that Ms. Beck is an army of one. This data comes from so many different sources. Ms. Beck sort of coordinates with the MCPS staff greatly. She's done a tremendous job in, first of all, illuminating the broader trends that have become commonly accepted now. that we are going from chasing capacity to allocating capacity while maintaining aging infrastructure. She's also done an amazing job of helping MCPS understand the impacts of some of their decisions in terms of enrollment allocation. All of this requires layers and layers of QC. We are very thankful that we have Ms. Beck in this role, and she's been doing this for as long as she's been doing it, and the data is solid, and we stand firmly by it.

Oh, no, no, I'm not questioning Ms. Beck's role. I'm just saying sometimes, you know, we develop a law, we develop a policy, and then we keep doing the policy, but it just, every once in a while, put our heads up and say, is it right? Should we do it more frequently, less frequently? And that's all I was just saying. So thank you. Thank you. Those are my questions, and you answered them. Thank you so much.

So don't go anywhere.

Definitely not. One more thing. This really is the last thing. I also enjoy it whenever you come. I'm very excited about data, and it makes me happy. But for the... You're discussing with the board about the effects of their decision, Board of Education and things. Have we... emphasize the relatively minimal amount we get out of these utilization premium tiers. The actual amount of funds that we get for these is not high, which goes into the point of these are not large developments happening in these areas that meet these criteria. I remember last year, but I don't remember the numbers, it was relatively low. I think it was $1 One development accounted for 90-some-odd percent of the amount of money that we got. The amount of funding we're getting out of this is not much. It doesn't really materially impact the budget at all. It's worth considering and emphasizing that when we go to talk to the Board of Education. As much as I enjoy seeing, they're very nice graphs and they're very colorful. This is a lot of work. There's a lot of squeeze for very little juice. So it's, I think, worth emphasizing to the Board of Education that tier it, no matter how you want to do all this, we don't get anything out of it. There's no money coming from these tiers, really. So I think that's worth emphasizing as well when we discuss that.

So one thing to add, Lisa Govoni, Supervisor with Design Placemaking Policy, is whenever we do the growth and infrastructure policy, we look at the tools that we have and the tools that we need every four years. We will be kicking off the next update. I know we just updated it, but next summer we will be kicking off the update for the 2028 growth and infrastructure policy, and we will be looking at... the utility of the utilization premium payments along with other things. I would also say that we will be coming to the board shortly with the report for the infrastructure funding work group, which we didn't – we were kind of agnostic about utilization premium payments, but we looked at utility of impact taxes. And, you know, we're excited to bring that to the board for feedback, and that's something that we will also be considering looking at.

We're already back to growth and infrastructure? Yes. I really feel like that was last minute.

It never ends.

It really doesn't.

Thank you. Okay, great. Thank you so much. Wonderful presentation. Thank you for all your hard work that has reminded a lot of a data analysis and coordination with the school. So do I have a motion to certify the results of the fiscal year 27 annual school tests that will take effect July 1, 2026. I'll move to approve.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. The ayes have it, 5-0. Thank you so much. We'll just take a one-minute break to turn over to the next item, which is item number seven, the Mahon Village Preliminary Plan and Final Forest Conservation Plan, where staff is recommending approval with conditions. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. We're on item number seven, the Mahon Village Preliminary Plan and Final Forest Conservation Plan, where staff is recommending approval with conditions. And this morning, we have Josh Penn presenting this item. Welcome, Mr. Penn.

Good morning. For the record, Josh Penn with the Up County Planning Division. We do indeed have Mahon Village here. It's Preliminary Plan number 120250140 and Final Forest Conservation Plan F20250550. project over here, we are recommending approval with conditions for both the preliminary plan and the forest conservation plan. The location of the property is subject to just east of the downtown of Damascus in the Damascus area. It's off the east side of Woodfield Road. There are vacant properties to the north and east. And to the west, we have the county right-of-way for Woodfield Road and the shopping center across the street. And to the south is the Damascus library and senior center projects. Site close up with aerial photo is 2.7 acres approximately, parcel 568, zone CRT, and it does have a TDR overlay zone, but the applicant's chosen to use standard method, not utilizing the TDR overlay. There is a 25-foot WSSC easement along the southern boundary here. It's not shown, but it's all the way along the entire southern boundary. It's almost completely forested, and there is stream valley buffer from an off-site stream to the east. The proposal is creation of 19 lots. There will be two different size lots. End unit lots are about 1,200 square feet, and the interior lots are about 1,100 square feet. It is a proposed private road and alleys with access from Woodfield Road right away. The common open space is being provided here over to the east-hand side of the thing. You can also see the lately dashed walking path that's going to be included also. It goes through the gray conservation easement area. It's going to be a natural surface trail. Like I said, there's 19 lots. The block design is irregular, but the shape of the parcel is also small and irregular. So it works with the piece of land that's being utilized. The lot sizes, shapes, and locations comply with the standard method of development in the townhouse development. All proposed lots will have access from a private road. And the proposed subdivision does provide common open space. There are several master plans in play here, notably the 2006 Damascus master plan. There are no site-specific recommendations, but it is consistent with the zoning and consistent with the recommendation for the town center area of the Damascus master plan. The 2018 bicycle master plan calls for a side path on Woodfield Road. That facility already exists, so no additional construction is needed there. The master plan of highways calls for a minimum of 80 foot right of way along Woodfield Road, which already exists, so there's no more dedication needed. And then we have, last but not least, we have the Patuxent River Watershed Functional Master Plan. The subject property is located in the PMA, but it's exempt from the PMA requirements because it has a zoning density greater than RE2. The applicant is required to utilize best management practices, which they are doing through their environmental site design as part of the stormwater management plan. Just at this point, I'd like to say there was one letter that came in after the posting of the staff report. You should have all received it in your packets. I know an email went out. It was from the Patuxent Watershed Protection Association. And they had no objection to the plan, but did say that they would like reforestation in the watershed if possible. Woodfield Road is the town center street. It's a master plan right of way of 80 feet with an existing eight foot side path and six foot buffer. There's private roads and alleys. The private street will have nine visitor parking spaces, including one ADA space, and a six foot sidewalk with a six foot buffer and 20 foot private alleys. The transportation statement was submitted, and there was less than 30 net new vehicle trips. Therefore, a full study was not required for transportation. The property is known as CRT and has a land use category of mixed use development area, which has a afforestation threshold of 15% and a conservation threshold of 20%. The net tract area, including off-site improvements, is 3.12 acres subject to forest conservation. They are removing 1.9 acres of forest, and the reforestation requirement is 1.89 acres. the applicant is promoted to meet this off-site through either a bank or fee-in-lieu. You can see here to the right the diagram. The stream value buffer is all in retained forest and will be placed into a category one easement. There we go. It does conform with the master plan. The lots comply with all provisions of the subdivision regulations and zoning ordinance. It meets all requirements of the CRT standard method. Public facilities are adequate, complies with chapter 22A, and has an approved stormwater management concept. We do have one correction to the staff report in the summary on page two. There's a paragraph you see before. There was original talk about an interparcel connectivity to the north, but it was later found infeasible because of the stream valley buffer at that end. So we couldn't provide that connectivity without damaging the environmental properties of the site. So that made it in there from my notes. And unfortunately, it was not correct. So I just redlined it out for you here. The approval with conditions for both the preliminary plan and for the final forest conservation plan. Thank you, and I'm here for any questions you may have.

Thank you so much, Mr. Penn. Would the applicant like to make a presentation?

Good morning. For the record, Françoise Carrier with the law firm of Bregman, Berber, Schwartz, and Gilday representing the applicant, and I am accompanied by the applicant's engineer, Eric Tidd from CAS Engineering. We don't have a formal presentation, but I did want to really emphasize for you that this is an unusual project because it's an unusual piece of land, and to my mind, it's a great opportunity to create a little more housing in the Damascus town center area, which the master plan was wanted to promote by using a piece of land that's really just sort of forgotten behind a big SHA stormwater management pond, and it's going to make a nice little community in a wooded setting. And it was a lot of work to find a way to actually get – create a plan for a community here that would satisfy all the standards and be – feasible from an engineering standpoint, and we got some good input on that from planning staff and from MCDOT staff who helped us really massage this to get it to where it is today. If you have any questions, we're happy to answer them.

Thank you so much. You took the words out of my mouth when I first saw the site plan. Wow, that's an interesting So thank you for being creative and providing for housing. You know, we have a housing crisis. And also, this is an opportunity for what looks like for sale housing, which is really needed in the county. So thank you for that. And you also mentioned, I was wondering, to the west, there's a stormwater management pond. So it does add a feature here. And also having the Category 1 forest there, easement and with the walkways through it, I think it really adds, gives a place for people to go and connect with nature. So I'm very supportive of this project.

That walkway was a suggestion from environmental staff.

Yes.

And it was a great one because it's a way to have the community feel like they get a benefit from this forest area. So that was a good addition. I should have also added that I believe the applicant is online. He's out of the country so couldn't be here in person, but obviously appreciates the board's review.

And apparently there's a school, some school to the south, some, no, to the, is it? There's a library.

Yeah, library right next door.

So there's potential connection there.

Yes.

Okay, great. Thank you. Those are my questions and comments. Any other questions and comments?

Just for the, I think, again, I agree. It's a good project. It's really creative and good use, I think, of that with the density and the type of housing to fit. So I think it's really interesting. Other than that, just the reforestation that you mentioned in the pot hooks at Watershed, is that a possibility to put, is that in the... Is there a way we can do that? Are there any objections to attempting to find a way to do that reforestation within the watershed?

I was not aware of that suggestion until this morning, so I have not discussed it with my client. I can't imagine there's any reason he would object, as long as it's feasible. Given feasibility. There's a forest bank that you can use.

What was the question?

I'm sorry, your comment. I missed it. Oh, the comment from the Patuxent Watershed Group, the reforestation to be within the watershed if possible. And I just want to make sure that we highlighted that. If it is, if there's an available bank and it's feasible, I think it would be just to make sure that that gets in there, that we try to do that if possible.

I'm sure our environmental staff can work with the applicant on that to see if there is anything available. Absolutely. Just make sure that we follow up.

Yeah, I think that's a good idea because they are looking at off-site, so that may help that they could plant it there. The other thing that I like about this, in addition that it is opportunity for for sale, is the size, the small compact size that makes it extremely, I hope, I believe it does, affordable. So this is something that would add not only for sale, but makes it something that is more affordable.

Questions or comments from the board? Should we do one or two approvals here? Do I have a motion to approve the Mahon Village preliminary plan where staff is recommending approval with conditions and corrections and some language around the potential, if it works out, to do the reforestation in the watershed?

No. I'll move to approve the preliminary plan with conditions and the comments from today.

I second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. The ayes have it. 5-0 to have a motion to approval of the final forest conservation plan where staff is recommending approval with conditions. I'll move to approve the forest conservation plan.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. The ayes have it. Thank you so much. We look forward to the project moving forward. Thank you. Thank you very much. Very creative. We're just going to take another two-minute break and then start with our next item, item eight, Tevis Place staging allocation. Thank you. Good morning and welcome back. We're on item number eight, Tevis Place staging allocation request for staff is recommending approval. And we have Adam Bossie again this morning to present this item.

Yes, good to see you again. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the planning board. Happy to be back again this morning. This time I'm here to talk to you about the Tevis Place staging allocation request. And just very broadly, staging allocation requests, these are the mechanism that is in place to ensure compliance with the development phasing limits of the 2010 White-Flynn Sector Plan and the 2018 White-Flynn II Sector Plan. The sector plan set a phase one development limit of 4,800 residential dwelling units and up to 2.75 million square feet of non-residential development within the sector plan areas. with the staging allocation request. This is the first of two that's going to be presented to you today. The other one will follow right after this presentation. This place is located at 11800 Neville Street in the 2010 White Flynn Sector Plan area, and this is a property that is in the CR zone. Development... itself is a 154-unit multifamily development that's going to provide a minimum of 50% use on 1.56 acres. The project was approved by the planning board back in May 2025 under a mixed income housing communities plan, E20250010. And this is just an illustration here of the ground floor plan of that multifamily building. So this table provides a snapshot of the existing development capacity within the sector plan areas that's shown in the top two rows here. Currently, there's 1,575 units that were previously approved with a remaining capacity of 3,225 units. At that time, too, there was also 940,140 square feet of non-residential density that was previously approved, leaving about 1.8 million square feet within the cap to be utilized. So proposed with this SAR for Tevis Place in the middle row here, we see those 154 units being accounted for. And that increases the total units to be approved to 1,729 with a remaining capacity of 3,071 in the phase one cap. Tevis Place, their proposal does not make any change to the non-residential density cap here. As I get moving with our recommendation here, I did just want to note one very minor correction that I want to put on the record here. On page one of the staff report, we had an acceptance date of May 2016. That should have been May 2026, so just correcting that typo. And as we saw on the last slide, the 154 multifamily units for Tevis Place is within the phase one development limits of the White-Flynn Sector Plan and White-Flynn II Sector Plan areas. So sufficient capacity remains to accommodate this project. Staff is recommending approval of the staging allocation request. With that, I'll conclude the presentation and be happy to answer any questions.

Great, thank you. First, would the applicant like to make a presentation?

Good morning, Chair Harris and members of the board. Heather Delapulski, land use and zoning attorney with WireGill. We also have a representative of the applicant and our engineer online today to answer any questions. We are very excited. You probably remember we're the first mixed-income housing community plan. We're in for permits right now with MCDPS. It's going well. I also just want to say thank you to Mr. Bossie and staff for their presentation. I think the condition of the MC plan was 50% MPDUs, but we are actually providing 100% MPDUs, and we've already entered into our agreement to build with the HCA. So we are moving forward very quickly. We have sung the praises of the MC plan process to anybody who will listen. So I wanted to thank you all for that and just happy to answer any questions you may have.

Well, great. Thank you. So just for our – I'm very, very surprised. of this project. And one of the questions is, maybe you can tell us, in the staging, what goes into a staging analysis, like making sure there's infrastructure there for these projects in this area? Could you just talk a little bit for our benefit?

Yeah, thank you, Chair Harris. I think you hit on it right away. So the staging allocation request mechanism was set up as a check, basically, monitor development in the sector plan area, and that ties into the availability of infrastructure and its adequacy. So we know that based on the sector plan studies that were done and the implementation guidelines that followed them, there's, you know, a certain amount of capacity, the 4,800 units in Phase 1, and that 2.75 million square feet that can be accommodated with the infrastructure that's available today. future development beyond that, you know, that's something that the board and staff will have to look at at a future time when we get closer to that cap.

Great, great. Thank you so much. Any questions or comments from the board? Hearing or seeing none, is there a motion to approve Tevis Place staging allocation request?

No.

Yeah, where staff is recommending approval.

I'm jumping on you a lot today. Already my apologies. But yes, I would move to approve the staging allocation request.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. The ayes have it. Thank you so much. Yeah, I look forward to the project moving forward. And we'll just take a one-minute break to switch over for our next item, which is also about staging allocation, which is the Pike and Rose Phase 2 Building 2 project. Thank you. Hello, and welcome back. Sorry, we had some technical difficulties. We're on item number nine, Pike and Rose phase two, building two, staging allocation requests, where staff is recommending approval with condition. And Mr. Gatling from the Montgomery Planning presenting this item. Thank you.

Good morning. Saquon Gatling with West County presenting the Pike and Rose Phase 2 Building 2 staging allocation request number 29200. Pike and Rose, which is in North Bethesda within the 2010 White Flint Sector Plan area. Building 2, which is highlighted and right on your screen here with the zoning as shown. is a request for confirmation of non-residential density of about 110,000 square feet. This site was last seen in June as the site plan amendment shown on your screen here changed the height and use of the building to look like this via the rendering submitted by the applicant showing retail on the bottom here. lab space on top. Special thank you to Adam for coming and laying the groundwork in the previous SAR. This builds on that, showing no residential units being proposed, the 110,000 square feet of non-residential density, and still remaining just under 1.7 million square feet of non-residential density in the phase one staging capacity for the sector plan area, if this is approved.

Can I ask you a question here?

Sure.

This question was lingering in my head even for the last one before. So I don't understand why they have already done the design, they have done already the work and everything, and they come to us for approval. I understand that we still have a good number of units left, If I was a developer, I would get nervous if it gets very close to the end and you have just a few units left and I'm still working and I'm not ready to do it. How are you going to do that? Because they spend a lot of money to get to this stage. And then we approve it right before they go to construction. Is that what we are doing?

Yes.

So what if that by the time they get here, they go over the limit? Are we going to stop them?

We'll stop them cold. Sorry. That was a joke. For the record. For the record, no jokes, I promise. So the way the staging is set up is that this is in phase one and there's additional infrastructure that needs to be completed to sort of unlock phase two. So I think were we to get, you know, 3,000 units from now and 1.7 million square feet of commercial we will have had the conversations about Making sure that the infrastructure is in place the part of the work program for the West County planning team is to Do an assessment of this staging and how well it's working and whether this is still the right answer. So in the coming let's say by year's end in the fall, we'll be coming to you with the scope of work to take a look at that very question. So stay tuned.

Yeah, because I understand even the scope of work or whatever is not a guarantee that it's going to happen. So if I'm a developer and this is getting close, to where my range is, I'm not going to work on it. Because I'm worried that I'm going to spend money and then come here, someone else has come for me that I didn't know or whatever, and I would be stuck. So this is anti-development, in my opinion. Just saying that.

Thank you for that so with that we found that the stage allocation request is consistent with the application, I mean with the sector plan and place implementation guidelines and there's sufficient capacity so we're recommending approval of the request and thank you.

Yes, thank you for your presentation with the applicant like to make a presentation.

No formal presentation, just Scott Wallace with Miles and Stockbridge for the applicant, Federal Realty. Appreciate staff's efforts to get the SAR to initially approve the site plan, but also then to get the SAR to you. And happy to answer any questions.

Great. Thank you. I have one question. It says this is for an R&D building. Do you know what it is? It's just for?

It's a ground floor retail office above.

Office, a typical standard. Yes.

And I should also, I believe online, representatives of federal and the civil engineer, just in case there's any questions.

Okay. So this is ready to go?

They're finalizing some plans for the buildings, and the hope is as long as the market can support it and the plans can be finalized to the retailer's specifications, that's the idea. I mean, that's the hope.

Great, great. Thank you so much. I have no other questions or comments. Does the board have any questions or comments?

Just that it was sad to see Park Social go. It's exciting to see an office come. Uh, but yeah, that's, you know, park social was kind of such a unique space. And I think, I don't know, I don't remember exactly. I think maybe that that company is having broader challenges. I can't remember exactly their situation, but this is obviously really exciting, um, addition to, to the neighborhood. So yeah, excited to see it come to fruition.

Of course, there's a lot of other exciting things at Pike and Rose, too. And we would love to see it approaching the capacity limits, because that's a great sign that White Flint is continuing to thrive. From a federal's point of view, the more the merrier that are coming to the site.

Yeah, as Commissioner or Vice Chair said, I mean, to also have an office building built in this market is, you know, it's positive. Okay, thank you. No other questions or comments? So do I have a motion to approve with conditions the Pike and Rose Phase 2 Building 2 staging allocation request?

I'll move to approve with conditions the staging allocation request. Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. The ayes have it. Thank you so much. I look forward to you moving forward. We'll take another just really quick break and start with item number 10, the local government annual reporting to Maryland Department of Planning, where this is a briefing to staff. Thank you. Good morning. We're on item number 10, the local government annual reporting to Maryland Department of Planning, where staff has given a briefing to the board. And I believe this is Gabriel Patterson King leading this. I'm sorry, Jay. Jay McCurdy leading this discussion. A welcome, and we look forward to this briefing.

Good afternoon. For the record, as you just said, my name is Jay McCurdy. I'm here with Colin McNamara and Gabriel Patterson-King. We're GIS specialists with the Research and Strategic Planning Division within the Planning Department. We're here to present the Local Jurisdiction Annual Report for MDP, the Maryland Department of Planning for calendar year 2025. And we ask for your approval to transmit the report to the County Council and MDP by July 1st. In 2008, MDP has been required by state law to collect land use and development information from every jurisdiction with planning and zoning authority in Maryland. Over time, additional reporting requirements have been added. Most recently, a new law, HB 131, expanded the report to include housing permit and development review information to compare jurisdictions and identify where delays in the housing approval process may be occurring. MDP uses this information that's collected through this report to create both an annual snapshot and a long-term picture of development activity across Maryland. Each year, the data and questionnaire responses are compiled into a statewide development inventory report and website that is then shared with policymakers and the public. Our role in RSP is to gather information from a variety of internal sources, including our parcel database, the Hansen Development Tracking System, zoning data, and information provided by the Parks Department. We also work with several external partners, including Montgomery County Public Schools, the Montgomery County Department of Transportation, the Maryland State Highway Administration, and the Montgomery County's Open Data Portal. Because of this new housing requirement under HB 131, we also work closely with the Department of Permitting Services to ensure the development review data is complete and accurate. Once we've assembled the data, the report is provided to staff within the planning department and the director's office who complete the narrative sections. After the report is finalized and submitted to the County Council, the data is uploaded to MDP, where it becomes part of the state's land use and development database. The report is organized into six major sections, covering topics from growth-related changes in development patterns to land preservation and metrics, a development capacity analysis, and a section on housing measures and indicators. A new section was added this year related to development impact fees. We have been granted an extension by MDP on answering this section because MDPS is currently working on filling out this portion of the report. A common thread throughout this report is the relationship of this information to Maryland's Priority Funding Area, or PFA. PFA was established in 1997 as Maryland's designated growth boundary. It identifies where the state generally directs growth-related investments such as transportation improvements, water and sewer infrastructure, and economic development funding. Each county decides which areas it wants to designate as PFA based on land use and density. MDP then reviews those requests to ensure they meet state requirements. They also maintain the official statewide PFA maps. The map on the left shows Montgomery County's PFA, while the map on the right shows a statewide PFA. While Montgomery County represents only 5.1% of the total state land area, it contains about 10% of the state's PFA. This report helps the state evaluate whether growth and state investments are occurring in those dark gray areas that you see on the maps. Now I'm going to hand off to Colin to illustrate some of the results found in this year's report.

Good afternoon. For the record, Colin McNamara with Research and Strategic Projects. I will highlight key findings from the annual report for calendar year 2025. As Jade noted, the gray areas on the maps represent the PFA. First, we mapped our area master plans. In 2025, the department completed two site-specific master plans, while five more area plans were in progress. The department also completed five planning department studies and one functional master plan, the master plan of highways and transitways update. Four new area master plans and four new studies and projects were introduced this past year. In 2025, 79 major transportation improvement projects were completed. Of the 40 site-specific projects, 35, or about 88%, were located within the PFA. opened in Montgomery County last year. However, one school underwent a major revitalization, and two schools received additions. All three projects were located within the PFA. MDP with information on key preservation tools, including transferable development rights, partial building lot terminations, and agricultural easements. In 2025, 12 TDRs preserved 73 acres. The county also added 30 new forest conservation easements, preserving 326 acres. As expected, most land preservation activity occurred outside the PFA. The department had 11 land purchases, which preserved 168 acres in 2025. Montgomery County accounts for a major share of land preservation statewide. Over the past 10 years, 18% of all land preserved in Maryland has been preserved in Montgomery County. We provided land use statistics. The graphic on the left shows the proportions of each land use category found within the PFA, while the graphic on the right shows the countywide land use distribution. Major land uses within the PFA are single family detached housing, road right of way, and parks, while the largest countywide land uses include agriculture, single family detached housing, and parks. have remained relatively static from year to year. On the left is a graph that shows the change in land uses for the past 10 years within the PFA. Warehouses and open space rack are up, while industrial, parking, and vacant land uses are down. The graphic on the right shows how Montgomery County holds a higher share of residential land uses within the PFA by both land area and the number of parcels compared to the rest of Maryland. Finally, we provided results from a comprehensive development capacity analysis. To be counted as having capacity, parcels had to be residentially zoned, vacant or suitable for development, taxable, and outside environmentally sensitive areas. About 90% of qualifying parcels and potential residential units are located within the PFA. I will now turn it over to Gabe to discuss residential measures and indicators. Thank you.

For the record, Gabriel Patterson King, Research and Strategic Projects. To satisfy the reporting requirements of state law HB 131, we worked with DPS to document the quantities and locations of residential and commercial growth. The state's focus is heavily on whether projects fall within the PFA. The maps, tables, and data that are part of the report reflect this. As you can see here on the left, of the 29 new approved development plans, 21 or 72% were located within the PFA. A couple notes before questions arise. The terminology here reflects the state's template, which doesn't always adhere to our county's terms or the development patterns and paradigms. One downstream consequence of that is that these numbers do not indicate the size of the project, only that there was an approved project. On the permitting side, 744 residential building permits were issued consisting of 3,250 residential units. 75% of the permits, not units, only permits, were issued within the PFA. Diving further into the data, in 2025, 86% of units permitted fell within the PFA, in line with the 85% average over the last 10 years. This compares favorably with the 10-year state average of 81%. The development approval side, i.e. what the planning board handles here, 95% of approved development units fell within the PFA. The development plan approval numbers have consistently been predominantly within the PFA, averaging 95% over the last 10 years, right in line with this year's numbers. The report also asks about commercial plan and permit data. This year, 82% of building permits issued for commercial use fell within the PFA, slightly lower than the 89% 10-year county average. On the other hand, the area approved in development plans continues to largely be in the PFA, with 98% of approved development plan square footage occurring in these areas. To conclude with the next steps, we are seeking your approval to submit the 2025 report to the county council and to the Maryland Department of Planning by July 1st. Subsequently, we will upload both the data and GIS layers to the state servers, allowing MDP to create their own end-of-year analysis and report for the state. Thank you for your time.

Thank you so much for your presentation, and also thank you for putting together and analyzing this data. It's just very, very helpful. Have you, just out of curiosity, have you seen, well, I know this is for those priority funding areas and how, you know, there's incentivizing to do this, but have you seen, so does the state then compile their own, this is to the state, and then they compile their own report and they make comments on it?

Right, so every year they compile last year's data, because this is for calendar year 2025. This year's report is for 2024. And so that's where some of these graphs came from, where we're comparing our situation with the rest of the state of Maryland. What they do is they just give a – it's almost like a brochure. It's like a six-page results that they give out, and they apply charts and say exactly kind of what we just did. But we always try to compare results. the rest of the state to see if there's any interesting trends with just Montgomery County. OK, great.

Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions or comments from the board? So we'll have one motion to submit this local government and annual reporting to the Maryland Department of Planning. And first it goes to the council, correct? To both. We'll send them to both. Is that what you're saying? Yes. Thank you. Yeah. Ed, do I? That's the motion.

All right. All right. Yeah, move to approve it and send it to both organizations.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. Thank you for your hard work. We appreciate it. And what we'll do now is, so the board is going to go to closed session and then have lunch, and then we'll come back, what does it say? We'll come back at 1.05. So with respect to the closed session, according to Maryland Annotated Code, General Provisions Article 3-305 to consider the acquisition of real property for a public purpose and matters directly related to the acquisition. The subject is Montgomery Park's potential property acquisition. Do I have a motion to go into closed session?

I'll move for closed session. Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. The ayes have it 5-0. So thank you. We're going to go into closed session, have lunch, and then come back at 1.05. See you then. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome back. We're on item number six, updated forest conservation technical manual, where staff is recommending that we approve the updated forest conservation technical manual. And this afternoon, we have Kristin today presenting this item. Welcome, Kristin.

Thank you. Yes, it's Kristen Taddy. I'm a Forest Conservation Planner III with the Environment and Climate Division. I've been working on this update for a little over a year on a contract basis, and I'm very excited to present this to you today. It's been a long time coming. So I am going to start with a bit of background on what the Forest Conservation Technical Manual is and how it's used by our applicants and staff. So what is the Forest Conservation Technical Manual? The Technical Manual is essentially a resource for creating consistent and predictable reviews. It's important to note that it is not the forest conservation law. The law is what establishes our legal requirements for forest conservation in the county. The manual explains implementation and provides technical guidance for implementing the law. So it is a guidance document for plan preparers and a companion to the county's forest conservation law and regulations. It sets review procedures and expectations and provides required methodologies, technical standards, and reference materials. And it ensures that our forest conservation law is applied consistently. So who is the Forest Conservation Technical Manual for? It's for anyone preparing or reviewing a plan under the forest conservation law for Montgomery planning staff review. So this includes developers and applicants, landscape architects, foresters, and arborists, and planning staff and reviewers. It's also for anyone seeking best practices for forest conservation, any organization that might be looking to plant, preserve, or program in the forest conservation space. About the history of the Forest Conservation Technical Manual. It was released by Montgomery Planning through the Montgomery Planning Board in 1992, just after the Forest Conservation Law was enacted in Montgomery County. Primarily, the original manual, it is a physical manual. It's quite text heavy. There were limitations to the graphics and visual guidance at the time. And it's a bit difficult to navigate and has some outdated formatting and organization. So this is the first time that the manual has been updated in over 30 years, which is why we're so excited to finally present this to you today. So why do we want to update it now? So recently, there's been a push to update these technical manuals across the state. And most recently, the state of Maryland updated their manual in 2024. So of course, we need to incorporate our new standards and the modern practices and current review procedures that have developed over the past 30 plus years. And one huge benefit to doing this today where we can create an online digital PDF is that we'll now have a living document that can be more easily updated as the law changes and continues to change and as our policies change as well. Formerly the technical manual was known and referred to as the trees technical manual, you can see a little comparison of the two covers side by side here 1992 on the left and our proposed updated forest conservation technical manual on the right here. The timeline of this particular update, this update began in 2019. Planning staff began to revise the chapters of the manual at the time. In 2025, we formed an internal working group where we picked up those chapters, wrote new ones. So we reviewed those 2020 drafts and then also started to rework the appendices as well. Over a month ago, we had a public review period and an input session where we gathered input and feedback from the public, from developers, applicants, agency representatives. And we also began working on the graphics and layout to create that living PDF document that I mentioned. So a bit of an overview of the key improvements, and I will go into more detail about each of these in the later slides. So we have new chapters and appendices. We have many improved infographics. Templates have been incorporated that are currently on the website, and a lot of new, very helpful visual explainers. Technical guidance and specifications have been expanded. And then, of course, over 30 years of the county's forest conservation law updates have been incorporated. That public feedback that we received has also been incorporated. And now, of course, we have a user-friendly digital document with hyperlinks to help users navigate it. And this will be easier to update moving forward as well. So what's the same? So we do have a very similar layout where chapters are then followed by appendices, and then the appendices contain technical specifications and reference materials. This is very similar to the original manual, and it's also the way the Maryland technical manual is laid out and other technical manuals that other counties and jurisdictions have. Actors on variances, forest conservation plan exemptions, implementation, and forest mitigation banks. That program did not exist, of course, in 1992. And then we have some new appendices, a new updated planting and maintenance schedule, and a new appendix on soil restoration, a guide for that. And then all of the specifications in the appendices have been redesigned and modernized. So I'm going to share some of the improved infographics, templates, and visual explainers throughout the manual. This is really just a small selection. And this is a sample natural resource inventory for a stand delineation. You can see the 1992 graphic on the left and our 2026 update on the right side. So the sample NRI that you see on the right side has been updated with numbers that correspond to a list of requirements, required components, and that is in a table with lots of details for where applicants can find those resources and all of that information. So I think it's a lot easier to navigate for the user and it contains a lot more useful information. We also have a similar graphic for an existing conditions plan with numbers that correspond to a list of required components. We also took the required method for calculating a tree's diameter and critical root zone from a paragraph and a formula, which you see on the left side, to a full infographic on the right side, which also includes a new set of formulas and procedures for calculating the diameter of multi-stem trees. And then there are now two worksheets for calculating forest mitigation requirements, so both inside a priority area or the same watershed or outside a priority area. Both of those worksheets have been included as figures in the new manual, and you can see, and also applicants are directed to the Montgomery Planning website to be able to download Excel files of these templates as well. There's also a new visual explainer on how forest conservation thresholds play into calculating forest mitigation requirements. As you can see, it's much easier to understand than the original black and white graphic on the left. And so we also have several brand new graphics in the manual. Here are just a few of them. So this one just explains a scenario. There are several of these that explain several scenarios for how forest conservation requirements might be determined depending on the land use category or the amount of forest proposed for removal, et cetera. So it's a visualization of several different scenarios. incorporated the template maintenance and monitoring report, which is currently available on the Montgomery Planning website, but now is included as a graphic and a template within the manual itself. And then throughout the manual, field images from staff, particularly from our forest conservation inspection team, who have numerous images from their work in the field. These provide real world examples of proper forest conservation planting and protection methods during construction. And so this is just one example image, but there are a number of these throughout the manual as well. Perhaps most excited to share a snapshot of the new technical specifications that have been updated throughout the appendices of the manual. The planning department's graphics team created some really modernized specifications, which I believe will serve as a gold standard for forest conservation techniques and protection methods in the field. So these are, again, a few before and afters with the 1992 specification on the left and the modernized 2026 specification on the right. So this one is for planting on level ground. We also have one for planting trees on slopes. Here's an example of the before and after graphic for tree staking and guying. planting and maintenance calendar, or just a portion of it really, that I mentioned earlier. And of course, much has changed in the last 30 years when it comes to recommended planting and maintenance timelines, especially with our shifting climate. So this calendar has been updated with input from our environmental reviewers and forest conservation inspectors. We also have this one I think is a great example of how we were able to simplify and also improve a graphic. So we have the 1992 specification for root aeration measures on the left and 2026 on the right. And here a much clearer illustration showing how utilities are to be installed beneath tree roots. This is a brand new specification on deer protection, which includes our two acceptable methods, which are wire and mesh fabric. Here is a tree trunk protection detail, which shows the traditional planking method that protects tree trunks during construction. And this is also a new graphic in Appendix G, which is based on a graphic that was developed about 10 or 15 years ago by the Environmental Protection Agency for stormwater management measures. And so it is showing how soil cells, structural soil, and suspended sidewalks allow tree roots to grow underneath sidewalks and paved areas into adjacent green space. We were able to improve on these graphics, and I'm very excited that we were able to include them in the manual.

Can I ask a quick question on that? Is there a quick way to describe what structural soil is?

Yes. From what I can recall, structural soil has a mix of different finds, different sizes of soils and gravel. So it allows for the sidewalk to be sort of suspended above it and also for tree roots to move through those spaces and for water to drain through. So it sort of holds up the sidewalk or holds up the paved space while preventing compaction of the tree roots so the tree roots are still able to get oxygen and nutrients.

Yeah, that's really cool. I hadn't heard about that.

Yeah, it's wonderful. It's a good method.

Can I just add something? Because we used it actually in civil engineering. It's not in the tank like that building the structure, but exactly what she talked about. They are designed, they're actually designed, the granular different particles in the soil are designed for the certain purposes. So if it is done for allowing the roots to come in, they design it in a way that roots can go at the same time can act like a regular compacted soil to hold the sidewalk or something on it.

Absolutely. And there's slight differences between the various techniques that you're seeing here, too. So I was describing structural soil, which is on the right side here. Suspended sidewalks, there are these columns underneath the sidewalks that actually allow the roots to pass through them. So there are spaces. It's almost a grid-like column. And it's a very similar technique over here where there is a structure that's actually holding up the sidewalk, but there's space between that the tree roots can pass through and then soil in there as well, of course. I've incorporated over 30 years of forest conservation law amendments into the manual. There have been multiple amendments over the past 30 plus years, so it's really difficult to capture all the various changes that have taken place, but this is a some overall updates that we were able to incorporate into the manual. So the data sources for natural resource inventory, forest and delineations, we've included a table with all of the different data sources where applicants might find the required components of an NRI for an NRI or a forest conservation plan. Aforestation and reforestation priority areas have expanded. So all of those areas are mentioned and included in the manual. With the most recent forest conservation law amendment, there is now a shrub planting requirement. So of course, that's included as well. And as I mentioned earlier, we have two forest conservation worksheets for calculating mitigation requirements, both inside versus outside a priority area. Both of those worksheets are included. Also, requirements for tree save plans, which might be required to support a forest conservation plan exemption application, is included. There's a whole section on that. And as I mentioned earlier, in the original manual, we did not yet have a forest mitigation bank program. So now we have a whole chapter on forest mitigation banking with all of those requirements included as well. So as I mentioned just over a month ago, we held a public review period from May 5th to 19th. And then following that, I held a public presentation and then also facilitated a discussion where any agency representatives, members of the public, applicants, developers, et cetera, could attend and did attend and provided helpful feedback for us. So staff considered all of these comments, and where appropriate, we incorporated several of them. We added a definition of planted green infrastructure to match the state of Maryland's relatively new definition. We also aligned the method for measuring the diameter of multi-stem trees with the state of Maryland's method for measuring the diameter of champion trees. We felt it was important to be in alignment there. And then we referenced Figure 3, which is the figure that I just mentioned that shows how to measure the diameter and critical root zone of a tree in the previous chapter on NRI FSDs. And we also added information in the section on forest conservation easements on how property owners with a Category 1 easement can work with their forest conservation inspector on long-term management of the easement. There are numerous benefits to the updated manual. Of course, I think it provides greater clarity for applicants and staff. There are now better standards, references, and templates to aid with plan preparation and reviews. And of course, now it's aligned with our current forest conservation law and regulations. And as a digital document, there's enhanced usability. The user can click on hyperlinks to jump from the table of contents, for example, to any section that they're interested in. So it's much easier to use. And primarily, it showcases current best practices and standards, which I believe will serve as a gold standard for practices in the forest conservation field and will result in well-planted and protected forests countywide. So as a next step, our staff recommendation is to approve the updated Forest Conservation Technical Manual. We'll, of course, incorporate any final changes requested by the board today. And those interactive links that I mentioned will be added. And the document will also undergo an accessibility review for compliance with ADA. Then it will be published on the Montgomery Planning website. And we'll be able to update it and continue to maintain it as the law becomes amended in the future as well. Thank you so much for your time. I'm here to answer any additional questions that you might have as well.

Well, thank you. Thank you for your very detailed presentation. Yep, I'm so excited you're able to update this, to bring it to today's standards, today's best practices, update it with respect to the state standards. And I really love the graphics. So I'm hoping that the practitioners you know, I hope that they see the benefit of having this revised document. So thank you. Any other questions or comments?

Yes. I'm sure that everybody would love that. I have worked with a lot of technical manual, and it is really a blessing to have something up to date and as clean and as nice. It's really nice presented. One thing that I really loved about it is the template. You said that they're like Excel templates. that people can just download it, and everything is there. You could just put the number and calculate. Because I was going to... I saw that and said, I hope they have done that, and you have done that. So that is really good. And I do not know how many you have done, but I think that anything that is a template... Or is it a calculation? Because I always wonder how this calculation is done. Because just we see the numbers, and I do not know how it was done. But I'm sure there is a method behind this. So it is good that all of those things were already available for people to do. I do not know that if it is possible if you have a search feature, because you said that you have put hyperlink, but if you have a search feature, because now it's digital, but it's PDF digital, but my understanding is that this search, they could even read the PDF document. If I want to know about something, somewhere, and I just put that word there, and it takes me right there, that I don't have to look for it. Do we have that? Yes, yes.

Oh my God, that's really good. You should have said it then, because that's a very good feature. Yeah, I think it's a feature. So it will be published on the website. And our website, luckily, has those capabilities. So for any PDF on the website, there's typically a search feature in the upper right corner. And so you should be able to search a word, in addition to, of course, clicking the hyperlink to the chapter or the appendix that you're interested in looking at, or even the graphic. Yeah, the search is for the whole document.

So if I just come there and I say, OK, take me to see that I can do the calculations for this specific or how can I do the maintenance or what does it take if I want to understand this and that and I just put it there and takes me right to the right chapter and the right page and say here look at it. That exists. That's wonderful. Congratulations. Actually it's 32 years. 32 years took a long time.

30 plus years. It's been a long time.

Any other questions, comments?

One of the things governments do well is providing information and resources for citizens to be successful. And this is an example of it. It ensures success. And it's a pathway to accomplishment using proven methods and techniques in the best interests of the public. You did an outstanding job presenting this. And you're one of the many excellent presenters that Jason and Robert have an opportunity to work with and share with us here. So you've done an outstanding job. Thank you.

Thank you. If I have a moment, I'll thank all the environmental reviewers, forest conservation inspectors, everybody who, and people who started this and got it started before I came in to finish it up, too. All the graphics team and everything, a huge shout out to everybody who worked on this. Because while I'm lucky enough to be able to present it to you, a lot of people have worked on this over the years. So it's certainly not just me.

It's excellent, excellent work. So yeah, congrats to the whole team, everyone who worked on it. And I hope it'll be used well for a long time, hopefully not 30 years before it's updated again. But yeah, it's really excellent work, and thanks for the presentation about it.

Thank you. Yeah, thank you again. Just out of curiosity, we can answer offline. Do you feel that with AI these days, I'm sure once it's put up there, it can take this document. And I wonder if someone could say, could you fill out my forest conservation thing based on the requirements in this manual? I'm just out of curiosity. I wonder, would it do that?

But we'll try it someday.

OK. Thank you so much. And so do I have a motion to approve? the updated Forest Conservation Technical Manual.

James is not here, so I'll be honored to take his job and move to approve the updated Forest Conservation Technical Manual.

I'll take Mitra's job in a second.

All in favor? Aye. The ayes have it 4-0. So thank you so much. Great presentation, great work, and look forward to it.

CHRISTINE TADDY- Chair Harris, if I could just jump in really quickly before we move on.

CHRISTOPHER HARRIS JR.: OK, please. Please jump.

CHRISTINE TADDY- I really want to thank Kristen Taddy for her work on this. Kristen used to work with us full time, and now she lives outside of Philadelphia. So she just came back really to help us with this manual, but she did a fantastic job. And I want to really reiterate what she was saying. This ended up being a full team I mean the entire environment and climate team got together weekly to go over this and look at the chapters and so it was a lot of work that was put in by a lot of people with a lot of passion and knowledge to share and the communications division was a huge help and I wanted to give them extra kudos because you see all these beautiful graphics that takes a lot of work thank you so much so we're going to take just a one minute break

And we'll start with our next item, which is item 12, Cabin John Park, section 1, preliminary plan, site plan, where staff is recommending approval with conditions. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome back. We're on item number 12, Cabin John Park, Section 1, Preliminary Plan, Site Plan, where staff is recommending approval with conditions. And this afternoon, we have Elza Heisel McCoy presenting this item. Welcome.

Great, thanks chair Harris and board for the record Elsa Heisler McCoy. I'm the chief of the West County planning team Here today with Cabin John Park section one preliminary plan one two thousand two six zero zero eight zero and site plan eight twenty twenty six zero zero nine zero I am joined by transportation planning staff, Justine Gonzalez-Velez, and we also have online Alex Weintraub from DPS Stormwater, as we've gotten feedback on that. So the proposed development is located in Cabin John. in the southern part of the county within the 1990 Bethesda Chevy Chase Master Plan. More specifically, it's located at the intersection of MacArthur Boulevard and 77th Street there in the Star. And the site is about 0.59 acres. Here's the site in context. So the site is zoned CRT 0.75 and R90 per the 1990 master plan, which basically recommended that the developed portion of the site, including the existing commercial buildings and the parking lots, have commercial zoning, which was later converted to CRT, with the rest of the lot R90. So there was a previous approval for this site for two lots on lot one, which is the lot we're talking about today. It was approved for up to 4,500 square feet of office retail use, including some existing structures to remain, more or less what's on the site today. And then lot two for a new single family home. So the applicant is proposing five lots for 10,825 square feet of gross floor area and 3,600 square feet of cellar space excluded from gross floor area for live work uses in four single family style buildings. And then 2,707 square feet of gross floor area and 900 square feet of cellar space excluded from gross floor area for residential use in one single family detached home. You can see the layout on the right. All of the building footprints are in the CR zone. So in terms, as discussed in the staff report, the development standards by and large were taken from the CR zone, not from the R90 zone. This over to Justine.

For the record, this is Justin Ivan with the Transportation Planning Division, and I'll be discussing the transportation element of this application. So the driveways are proposed for the units will be located along 77th Street, and pedestrian access will also be primarily provided through 77th Street. And as part of this application, a six-foot-wide concrete sidewalk buffer by a six-foot-wide street buffer will be constructed. This sidewalk will also provide access to the existing bus stop along Mark Arthur Boulevard west side to the side. To ensure safe and efficient pedestrian access, ADA compliant curb ramps aligned with a crosswalk will be provided at both ends of 77th Street and connected to the existing concrete sidewalk facility. Improvements to the bus stop will also be coordinated between the applicant and MCDOT at the latter stage. And finally, improvements along Mark Arthur Boulevard have been deemed unfeasible Since this is a roadway that is federally owned and maintained, therefore, to satisfy the requirements under the Complete Streets and the Bicycle Master Plan, the applicant will provide a fee in lieu of construction for the 10-foot-wide asphalt side path facility, the 6-foot-wide street buffer, and three extra feet of payment for bikeable shoulders.

Thank you. This slide shows the design of the buildings. We had, per the master plan, we had asked the applicant to provide some contextual images of other homes in the Cabin John area that had a similar style. And this was provided by the applicant, showing a similar architectural language in other homes in Cabin John. On the environmental side, the site is subject to a forest conservation exemption. With the tree save plan, the site has an approved stormwater concept with MCDPS. And we would note that the redevelopment will replace an almost entirely impervious site that has no existing stormwater management. And with new stormwater management and the development will moderately reduce the overall impervious area and help to soak up extra rainwater that sort of impacts the larger community. Master plan conformance in terms of plan-wide recommendations, the key recommendations were to reconfirm the existing residential character of the area, protect the high quality of life, residential character, and natural environment throughout the area, and in the Palisades, protect environment, character, and cultural resources. The subject development reflects and reinforces the residential character of the community with five single-family home structures that I've shown already. And the development will remove a paved parking lot, reduce imperviousness, and enhance the natural environment. For site-specific recommendations, the site was split-zoned, as I mentioned earlier, to encourage residential-scale development, reflect the area character, and enhance the natural environment. The development includes four live-work commercial uses designed as single-family homes and a fifth structure that is itself a single-family home. The scale and design are in keeping with the established character and scale of the community. And as you mentioned earlier, the reduction of impervious surfaces and the addition of stormwater management will continue to enhance the natural environment. In terms of noticing and correspondence, the applicant has met all noticing requirements. Staff received one email before the report was posted. That was included and summarized in the report, and a little over two dozen after with about A third of those emails supporting the development and the remaining raising concerns about stormwater management, which is why we have Alex with us from DPS. The density of the project, which is allowed under the zoning on the site and would provide five single family homes. The design compatibility we've talked about. And there was also concern about the reduction of neighborhood commercial space. The four live work units are commercial structures. They could accommodate an architecture firm, an accountant, some office uses that may not be allowed otherwise in the single family zone. And then within the area, there are several retail opportunities within walking and driving distance along MacArthur Boulevard from sort of the Glen Echo end to Seven Locks. So with this, in consultation with the applicant, staff is recommending some revised conditions for the preliminary plan. So preliminary plan condition 9 addressed the dedication of right-of-way. 9 addressed dedication along MacArthur Boulevard, but as Justine mentioned, They're doing a fee in lieu instead, so they will not need to dedicate land there. Condition 12 on platting reads in the report that there should be no clearing or grading prior to the site. before recordation of the plats. The applicant asked for some flexibility for demolition, to be able to do some demolition work before they had the plats recorded. So the revised language reads, there shall be no clearing or grading of the site before recordation of the plats. Except for demolition of the existing structures and related site infrastructure, a pre-construction meeting with the Planning Department Forest Conservation Inspector must occur and any required tree preservation must be approved prior to demolition. And then... The condition 14, again, regarding the record plats referenced shared driveways, and there are no shared driveways in the proposed development. So we are recommending removal of that condition.

I do have a question on number 12. How can you clear – how can you demolish a structure and related site infrastructure without – clearing or grading it, especially when water runoff or erosion can occur upon the demolition?

So the intent here is that they would, is the accept, so they would be able to clear and grade, but only in relation to the demolition and in concert with the tree save plan as reviewed by the Forest Conservation Inspector.

This is Alex with Water Resources with DPS. Just to jump in and add to this, so a sediment control permit would be separately required for that demolition to occur. So DPS would review any sediment controls that would be necessary to prevent any soil runoff.

Thanks, Weintraub from DPS Stormwater. So then for findings in the staff recommendation, the application satisfied the subdivision zoning ordinance as applicable and substantially conform with the 1990 Bethesda Chevy Chase Master Plan as conditioned and discussed further in the staff report. Staff recommends approval of the preliminary and site plan with conditions as included in the staff report and as modified today.

Thank you, Mr. Heisel-McCoy. We have several people to provide public testimony. I'd like to hear from them first before we go to the applicant, OK? So we have two in person, Richard Thompson of the MacArthur Park Homeowners Association and Peter Coste of the Cabin John Citizens Association. Each will have six minutes. And then we will go on to teams for three presentations. Thank you so much.

Oh, yeah, what happened to the mics? Bring your own mics.

My name and what else?

Pete Cousteau?

All right, ready? Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for having us here. My name is Pete Cousteau. My wife, Joanne, and I are 36-year residents of Cabin John, and we live on 77th Street. near this site where we raised our two children. But today, I'm here speaking as the president of the Cabin John Citizens Association regarding the preliminary site plans before you. Our full written comments and a community survey results are in the record for your review. Our Citizens Association is here because many of the citizens are concerned about the potential impacts of the proposal on their homes and their lives. Frankly, this corner matters to the community. It held a beloved community gym for 20 years, and prior to that, it was home to many different neighborhood retail places for almost 100 years. It dates back pretty far. Even Mamie Eisenhower went there. A year ago, 66 homeowners submitted a petition with concerns about the development. It was a topic of multiple public meetings throughout the year, and a survey in January drew about 107 responses. That's about 8% of the adult population within our 20818 zip code. The results reveal broad concern about the plan. There are three main things. The density and scale, the loss of the commercial space, and probably most importantly, stormwater. We'll focus on those three points. First, the master plan. The parcel is fairly unique. I realize that the 1990 plan devotes an entire paragraph to it, actually. It calls for, and I'm quoting, development of a residential scale for the surrounding land to remain in green space, and further development should be of the design and scale of the unique culture and natural environment. The proposal of the five three-story buildings with cellars at this 35-foot pipe and covering 2 thirds of the lot is, in our mind, is hard to square with that master plan. We do have townhouses. We have several sections of them, up to 90 of them. But where we have townhouses, groupings of townhouses, there's lots of green space, lots of trees, lots of ground, and many parking spaces, including for visitors and stuff. That's not the case here. And they're not on just a half an acre or 0.6 of an acre. Second is the zoning. The code defines CRT zoning for, quote, small downtown mixed-use pedestrian-oriented centers. This stretch of MacArthur Boulevard has none of those. As a matter of fact, all of MacArthur Boulevard from Brookmont to Old Angler's End does not have that kind of a feel. We've got one little shopping strip in Cavendon and a few other small pieces there. We may have the most of everyone. Also, we understand that this is the first application for the CRT zoning along MacArthur Boulevard. This came about in 2014. And we kind of disagree that we would ever zone that. We kind of got lumped in with a lot more of Bethesda. And it doesn't seem to be what would be fitting here. However, that's not neither here nor there now. But we ask you to carefully weigh how far that zoning should be stretched here and consider the impact beyond just the footprint of this lot. Third, the most important probably is the stormwater. This site sits at the bottom of a steep hill. We are completely on the watershed. River Road is 20, 35 feet above us. It comes down and comes down and comes down. And the same thing on our street. From my house, it goes down another 15 feet or so to that street. And right there is where a lot of the water gathers. The site has no really storm infrastructure. The draining on the street is in ditches and in gullies to that place. And the documents from the county itself has confirmed that there's a problem. The required stormwater damage treatment for that frontage listed as 740 cubic feet. This was entirely waived. DPS notes that the downstream area was reported full of dirt. That's pretty typical. And it continues farther along the path. Because MacArthur is federally owned, the storm drain study was deferred to the US Corps of Engineers, which has not yet evaluated whether the gully could absorb the runoff. And our contention is it's not just about absorbing that runoff. When that fills up, that means that three or four major places after that in front of these different homes are also backed up. And the water is much higher and much worse in those places. This is the headwaters of that. We respectfully, as the board, project against the master plan own standard of residential scale character as well as the CRT categorization of that spot and delay approving the project until the downstream drainage is resolved and the core and the DPS have coordinated on the record. We've spoken to the core fairly recently and they had no idea about this plan. They haven't seen anything on it at all they said. And we've reached out to the person in charge of stormwater management, and we didn't get any real information from them ahead of time. They made their decision prior to our being able to weigh in on. It's important to note that this area has 145 homes that are below it. MacArthur Boulevard, when that water's there, These homes, 145 of them, are below 20 to 30 feet below that. So when water backs up, it comes streaming right down into this guy's neighborhood and right into another neighborhood. The water that's in that gully goes about half a block near Tomlinson Avenue. And there's a big, big drain there. It's kind of like a bowl. And that fills up and floods the parking lot where my 85-year-old mother lives. So she can't get to her car when it's draining. They've spent, it goes underneath the aqueduct after that, and there is a four-foot to six-foot tunnel underneath the aqueduct. It pours all this water into that area. You can see drainage ditches that the people there have created with their own money that are six feet deep and about eight feet wide in some places. It's a very difficult situation. In any event, I think the stories of what's going on is interesting. What's happening is the proof is in the residents' stories. I just ask you to appreciate what we're going through and be thorough and thoughtful in your consideration of our concerns. Thank you very much.

Thank you for your testimony. And next will be Richard Thompson.

Thank you. Also, I had a couple of one view graph presentation. I don't know if that's available, but I would show it if there were.

Yes. Staff is going to pull that up for you. Thank you.

We'll come to that at the end, then, if it comes up. Well, good afternoon, and thank you for allowing me to speak at this hearing this afternoon. My name is Richard Thompson. I'm a homeowner in the MacArthur Park community, comprising 45 townhouses and common areas adjacent to the south side of MacArthur Boulevard. And as Pete indicated, and downslope from the proposed new development site. I'm speaking today as a representative of the MacArthur Park Homeowners Association to convey our concerns about the potential risk of future stormwater overflow into our community from the planned property development and from what we see as an under-capacity government-maintained swale along the adjacent north side of MacArthur Boulevard. We witnessed occasions following heavy rains, and I have some photos that I'll show you. Well, you can go to the next slide down, please. Where water has overflowed into 77th Street, as Pete mentioned, immediately across, and that is immediately across from our entranceway, and reportedly onto the northern lane of MacArthur Boulevard. that increased development footprint and the lesser water absorbing ground area with the proposed site plan could increase stormwater in the swale and then into our community. While the proposed site plan identifies some stormwater management concepts, we have not seen any quantitative analyses showing the resultant water flow out of the community. Concepts reportedly may or may not be part of the development plan, nor is there any deed restriction or other written obligation on the part of future homeowners to retain or maintain these structures. has recently made, and I can go to the next slide here, please, has recently made its own significant structural water management improvements due to our own past drainage issues. including repairs to our existing storm drains, added surface drainage, widening and resurfacing our roads, and adding concrete curbing. These totaling over $270,000 have resulted in a marked improvement in drainage and property condition. However, The existing and improved drainage systems were not intended to handle potential additional stormwater intrusion from outside our own community. We are requesting an objective government-led assessment that would quantify the potential stormwater flow from the new property development and existing swale that could spill over into our community. and identify any essential modifications to either that would mitigate this risk. We further request that approval and any commencement of the plan development be conditional on the conduct and findings of such an assessment. Almost finished here. Fully describing these concerns and study requests has been sent to the Montgomery County Department of Permitting Services, this planning board, and other related county and government entities, and we appreciate the responses that we've received to date. So thank you again for taking my testimony on behalf of the MacArthur Park Homeowners Association, and we urge the requested actions. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you both for your testimony. Any questions? No. Our process, we listen to all of the... Okay. Are we able to go to teams now? Okay, great. So we have three people that are testifying on teams, Timur Tunadur, Elliot Milholland, and Michael, Michelle Rosenfeld. So we'll start with Mr. Tunadur.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can. Thank you.

Oh, great. Thanks so much. Apologies. I'm actually on vacation, hence the teams. And I know I've got a short time limit. I just want to pipe in real quick. I'm a neighbor. My wife and I and our kids have grown up since we purchased our home in Cabin John in 2011 off 79th, just south of MacArthur, a couple blocks away from the project. our daughter, son-in-law and grandkids actually about a year ago moved back into Cabin John and live off 78 below the project on the other side as well. And I know Sean and Jason of Opal personally as neighbors, they're very caring members and residents themselves of the community. and very conscientious developers as well. I'm also a former member of Level Fitness, and frankly, before the property went on the market, was thinking of rejoining again. I did like the actual business itself, but also understand that it wasn't really financially viable, and the owner of the property obviously has every right to sell at market value. to whomever is able and willing to buy the property and develop it as allowed or, or, you know, in this case, you know, obtain, um, uh, you know, permission to, to change zoning, et cetera. Um, uh, I personally believe, um, that the project by Opal is proposed, um, with it being much lower density than a prior potential purchaser, um, was hoping to develop with, um, you know, five homes instead of, I can't remember what they had, nine or 11 or something, um, incorporating green roofs. And, um, while I'm definitely not a stormwater management expert and don't want to purport to have any real true knowledge, um, of it, uh, you know, the, the extensive proposed, um, uh, mitigation, um, including with the green roofs and lower density, um, I got to imagine would be at worst neutral compared to the large amount of blacktop and building space that's there now, if not an improvement. But more important to that, too, I know, again, as members of the community themselves, that, you know, ongoing, they'll do whatever they can or are able to do to ensure that they're maintain in our good neighbors and that the community has developed, um, and the homes has developed, um, would be an improvement, not a detriment. Um, and furthermore, if, if the property were sold to someone that would just wish to keep it as commercial, most likely it would be a significantly worse, um, situation in my opinion where we could end up having you know higher density commercial um that is just is built without as much consideration um with you know ensuing traffic issues um etc and um you know from what i've seen that they propose to build um their you know unique homes well thought out green um in keeping with the eclectic nature of the area and community um and um you know, uh, water is definitely an issue in our area. Um, but, uh, I trust everyone to work together with them to ensure that, you know, is actually, um, being handled.

So you should, you should wrap up your presentation. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Anyways. Um, so, so essentially I just want to say, you know, I live in the area too. And, um, I think what they're proposing to build is significantly better than many alternative, and I'm in favor and welcome the project as proposed. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you for your testimony. I just want to make one thing clear. There's no zoning change here. Okay, so just... Oh, there's not. Okay, cool. All right, thank you. Okay, thank you. All right, we'll go to our next person, Elliot Milholland.

Good afternoon, everyone. Can everyone hear me?

Go ahead.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to provide this testimony. I'm testifying here today to oppose the project. I don't think it is inconsistent, and I respectfully disagree with the recommendations of the staff, that it is consistent with the master plan. The master plan has this zone commercial, and simply calling a residential facility live work when in fact it is entirely a residential facility, shouldn't be a way to skirt the fact that this is a commercial property. We have very little commercial facilities in the area. We have the little strip right there in Glen Echo, but that's separated by one lane bridge, not one way, both ways, but one way, one way. And so you have to kind of go through usually three or four lights, red lights to actually cross the bridge and get to it. And there it's only a gas station, a hardware store and a 7-Eleven. It's not really a community gathering space like the gym was. There you used to have, it really was a cherished community resource. You had, you know, high school kids and octogenarians all kind of, you know, mixing and milling together. You also have, you know, we've got a few restaurants that are cherished resources as well in a little strip, but that's pretty much it. Otherwise you have to drive all the way to Bethesda or all the way to Potomac and with traffic these days, you know, that's a 25, 30 minute proposition each way. And so, You know, if you look at it, you know, in terms of places where people can gather in a commercial setting, you know, this is one of four places. It was one of four places. And I understand that the gym may no longer be viable. I understand that the current homeowner can sell the property if he wanted to, as he did. But the new owner should be required to make it a commercial facility, as was planned. And so, I mean, it could have been, you know, it could have been a sandwich shop, which we need, or a coffee shop or any other type of commercial facility where the community could gather. So for that reason, I oppose it. And I don't think you can get away with just calling it live work and make it fit into the plan if you can. I mean, what's the point of that designation? What's the point of doing that? If you can just call something, you know, work or, you know, to make it commercial. Can I call a residence, you know, can I call my own home, live, work, and zone it commercial? It doesn't make much sense, even though I'm in an R90 viewpoint. I'd also like to make a comment about the public hearing. I think, please listen to the, you know, to the views of the two community associations who are speaking. You know, the Cabin John folks or the MacArthur folks are really downhill. That stormwater issue is a big issue for them. The Cabin John folks who live there, who live right next door to it, you know, it's just one person testifying before you today, but they represent an entire neighborhood, an entire community. So it may be that the Planning Commission staff didn't realize the level of objection at the initial scoping meeting that they had at the community center there. you know, virtually, I would say 95, 98% of the people in the room were opposed to the project. It was standing room only, five rows back. There were about 60 or 70 people there, nearly all of them opposed to this project. And so, you know, as you're considering this, please do consider the fact that this property was zoned commercial for a reason, and putting condos on it and calling them lit work is not a way around that. It shouldn't be. And the Planning Commission is really the only You are the only folks standing in the way of it, of a developer who wants to come in and maximize their profits by cramming in five condos onto what was now kind of a commercial site. So with that, thank you very much for the opportunity to testify. I appreciate you.

Thank you so much. Next is our last person is Michelle Rosenfeld. Thank you.

Thank you. Good afternoon. Michelle Rosenfeld. I'm here on behalf of Peter Van Riper, who lives adjacent to the property at 7675 MacArthur Boulevard. And if we could pull up the staff report at page 15, it will help orient the board to where he's located. The reason why I'm here, we are not here in opposition to the project. However, the full length of the the new development spans the length of my client's property. My client is located on the property to the right of the blue rectangle that you see. And so once the project is developed, there will be five new single family residential dwelling units backing to the length of his property. We are here to ask that there be some landscape screening installed along the shared property line, specifically something perhaps like Roman pines, which are relatively tall, relatively narrow evergreens, simply to provide some landscape buffering between the new development, which is going to be significantly more dense, more massing than what's there now, and the existing single-family dwelling where my client lives. given the current layout, the backs of the new properties are going to look directly into the windows and directly into my client's property. And we simply request that to provide some screening for privacy and compatibility between the new development and my client's home. With that, I conclude my testimony. I would be happy to answer questions.

Thank you so much for your testimony. Would the applicant come up and present his presentation?

Would you all like to get started with your presentation?

Great. Well, good afternoon. Members of the board, for the record, Elizabeth Rogers with the law firm of Lurch Early and Brewer. Pleasure to be here today representing OPAL, the applicant for the preliminary and site plan applications that are before you. With me today are Sean Rupert and Jason Woodward with OPAL. We also have Steve Crum and Mike Whitmer with MHG. Before I begin, I do want to take a moment to thank staff. We're honored to have Elza as our lead reviewer and really do appreciate his efforts to get us to the board so expeditiously in order to meet some of the applicant's contractual obligations, and we're very grateful. This is a unique application in the sense that the principals and founders of the applicant are residents of Cabin John themselves. They have a vested interest in this project and the broader community. So before we get into the details of our presentation, I did want to turn it over to Sean Rupert to say a few words on behalf of the applicant.

Hi, everybody. My name is Sean Rupert. This is Jason, my husband. We own Opal. We've been building homes since 2001. We've built a little over 350 homes, mostly in the District of Conley and Montgomery County. We do mostly new construction and a lot of condos and townhomes and then a lot of historic conversions and renovations in the district. We've won awards locally, nationally, and even internationally. That's little Cabin John, a little builder, winning national and international design awards. And I think Cabin John should be super proud of what we bring to our neighborhood and to our city. MacArthur Boulevard. We live south of an even bigger commercial site than what we're buying on MacArthur Boulevard. Our home sits just south of MacArthur Plaza and receives a lot of the stormwater runoff from that parking lot, which is 100% lot coverage. Our kids attend Montgomery County Public Schools. Right now, this minute, they're at Glen Echo Park for summer camp. The property in question has been owned by the same couple since the 1980s. They're both retired and no longer living in the area. The proceeds of the sale are being donated to the owner's local high school alma mater. The property, as other people have said, the property has been dozens of businesses over the decades, none of which found long-term success. We too had been members of the former gym, which certainly saw some success, but after COVID, as a member, I rarely saw more than two people there. It was usually me and a single employee any day of the week. It had also been reduced by more than half during COVID and was never able to be fully raised to market. The commercial use on the site had become economically unviable. This is part of the reason the owner had been trying for quite some time to sell the property. received only three legitimate offers. The first offer prior to us was also residential for 11 four-story townhomes. than ours. And while we had it under contract, someone else put a verbal offer in, but they didn't want to do it until we pulled out. But it would have been for a 24-hour veterinary clinic, which can you imagine getting that approved in the neighborhood with 24-hour parking lights, maybe outside dog runs? What happens to dumpsters? It would be a freak show. Our intent was to minimize The project had been brought to me a while ago. I didn't want to do it because I knew whatever happened there would be controversial. But I also knew after the first one, I went to the meeting for 11 townhomes. It was grotesque. I wouldn't want it there either. Can you imagine 11 EYA, which I love EYA, but can you imagine them on MacArthur Boulevard in Little Cabin John? It would have been so weird. So after they pulled out, I wrote our offer on the property. And I knew that we could do it better. I knew that we could do something less dense. During that first meeting, all that everybody talked about was stormwater management and density. I knew that we could do it better. I knew that we didn't have to have the margins that other developers would have to have in order to buy something. So what we came up with was something that was shorter than required. but the homes are 32 feet, and then also quite a bit less dense. To make it financially viable for most people, the density for most developers would have to be six or seven homes for the price of the land to make sense. But I knew that we could do it, because that's not really what drives us. like a project from scratch based on the feedback we had heard from the meeting for the 11 homes, from the beginning, with better stormwater management and, of course, less dense. The project only has five homes. They're only 32 feet tall. And we're only 45% lot coverage. The existing lot coverage right now is 70%. We're taking quite a chunk out of the lot coverage. And then we're adding green roofs and stormwater management on every single home. Honestly, to protect Cabin John for what could have been worse. We're not doing this for giggles. We really do have the best intent, and we have the best intent for Cabin John. I freaking love Cabin John. I'm so proud that I live there. I'm proud that my house is on MacArthur. I'm proud that my house is in a prominent corner. I love that place. I literally love that place. We want to be good neighbors. And to that end, we held two informal community meetings in addition to the required pre-submission community meeting. And we attended two others and met with nearly a dozen people individually. The 66 people that signed that letter, I wrote them all a letter, every single person. And some people offered to come meet, I offered to meet them. Some people came to our office. I met with maybe six or seven of those people. Two of the people, after I met with them, asked if I wanted their name taken off the list. They didn't need to do that. Okay, time for me to wrap up. Okay. So after the meetings, we also adjusted the appearance of the homes. We changed the color to be something much darker based on community feedback. We also made the home on MacArthur look a little more street friendly and more facing MacArthur. A lot of people that live on MacArthur, historically older people, they want us to embrace MacArthur Boulevard and have the homes facing MacArthur look more friendly and more open to the streets. So we did that on our home facing MacArthur. We also changed the homes. The original plan was for townhomes. We changed it to single-family homes. And I know it's not the best solution, but changing four of the homes to live work so that somebody there could be a personal trainer or could be a hairstylist if they wanted to, it's still a good compromise. It's not perfect, but it's pretty darn good. The development of a residential project removes the worry of what a commercial property could be and what would ever find success there. Like I said, with the 24-hour veterinary clinic, There are three very successful commercial sites within walking distance of the property. I live across from one of them. There's another one two blocks away, and then there's another one on the other side of the one-lane bridge. They're all actually very successful. Though I love the activity and hearing people across the street, because from our yard, you can hear everybody out there having dinner. It's actually fun. It makes me feel like I'm connected to the environment, having everybody out there. I can hear them all having dinner. I like that. But there are downfalls. The overflow parking in front of our house, the dumpsters, the traffic, the flooded streets because of that whole thing is 100% lot coverage. It all ends up in our yard. I had to pay for a French train around my house, just like the people at MacArthur Park had to do. Why mid-century modern? I don't need that we need to delve into this very far. There are 34, I drove every road in Cabin John, there are 34 modern contemporary or mid-century modern homes in Cabin John That's a long tradition of mid-century modern. There's also 43 modern homes right across the street at MacArthur Park, and there's 83 mid-century modern homes on Persimmon Street. The mid-century modern also lent itself to our green goals. So with a flat roof line, which is a modern home or mid-century modern, then we can do a green roof. The mid-century moderns are also known for carports. That way, we don't have to have five freaking two-car garage doors up and down 77th Street. It's not what I want it to look like. So with a carport, that could be a flex space. Maybe people use it as outdoor space. It's probably going to be parking. But still, it brings activity to the street. It makes it look not so two-car garage-esque. To our dozens of supporters who have written emails and letters, thank you so much. To those who stop us on the street with kind words of support or people who whisper their support more often and want to remain on the sidelines, I want you to know that we hear you and we're doing the best that we can do. We certainly share the entire community's love for the neighborhood and its natural surroundings. Cabin John is a gem, and a gem has many facets.

Thank you. A few quick more words, and we'll be brief because John touched on a bunch of it. I can go to the next slide just real quick. I just reiterate, as staff mentioned, one of the nice things that this project can do is really create a better relationship with the surrounding street. Right now, the buildings either present large blank facades or kind of are significantly set back from the street. And one of the positive aspects of our proposed redevelopment is that we can better kind of engage and be more compatible with the patterning along 77th Street that's there today. Next slide, please. Sean touched on this briefly, but you can find virtually every architectural style within Cabin John. As such, the project has been thoughtfully planned to fit within such a diverse architectural community. We did strategically choose mid-century modern design, not only to accommodate the green roofs, as Sean had mentioned, but also because this allows for lower roof lines compared to traditional architecture. This style of architecture also allows for the third level of the home to be recessed so that it can improve the relationship between kind of the massing of these buildings with the pedestrian environment. We believe these are positive attributes of the building design. Next slide, please. I know there's been a lot of testimony regarding stormwater management. We wanted to touch on that briefly. The project promotes many environmental objectives, which we know are important to the community and the county, including both a significant decrease in the impervious area that's on the site today and improvements to stormwater management. And I did want to let Steve Crum from MHG, since there was testimony on that, provide a little bit more context about the stormwater being proposed.

Good afternoon. For the record, Steve Crum with McCree, Sendrickson, Glasscock. This slide pretty much addresses the quantity stormwater management. We're taking a site that has 70% impervious surfaces on it. We're reducing it to 46. We're providing environmental site design to the maximum extent practicable. We have an approved concept that's been reviewed by the Department of Permitting Services. Getting into the nitty gritty of that, we actually exceed the requirements for environmental site design in both the green roof and the bioretention planter boxes that are being proposed. There's been a lot of discussion about the drainage along MacArthur Boulevard. I think it's important to understand that this site is actually very low in the watershed. And as such, the runoff from this site will actually reach MacArthur Boulevard before the peak of the storm reaches it and will be gone downstream when the peak occurs at MacArthur Boulevard. So the runoff from this site on MacArthur Boulevard, this site isn't gonna contribute to it, just because of the timing of the way runoff from storms occur. Again, reduction of impervious surfaces, I guess I can't repeat that enough. I think those are the major points. We will – there was mention about that the Army Corps of Engineers doesn't have anything from the applicant at this point. The Army Corps of Engineers isn't interested – I shouldn't say that. They don't traditionally participate in the entitlements process. We certainly, as we move forward, will engage the Army Corps of Engineers and will – provide information to them about the conditions of the channel along MacArthur Boulevard. And if improvements are required by the Army Corps, the applicant will be required to meet those requirements. I'm happy to answer any questions if there are any.

Just a few final words, and I think I don't know if Steve mentioned, I mean, I would reemphasize the fact that the project is providing green roofs and microbiotension, which are obviously customary facilities for stormwater on projects, but not customary for a project of this small scale. And obviously, this is just the first step in the process. We have the stormwater concept approval from DPS, but we will be required to go back and get final stormwater approval before any permits are issued. And Pat LaVey, who has also been working on this project, I know has already reached out to the Army Corps to start that dialogue, but we're kind of told that wasn't yet right to really get into the details with them. We agree with staff that the project implements many goals and recommendations in the master plan. I think Elsa has covered it. I'm happy to elaborate on that further if the board would like. I would like to just respond to Ms. Rosenfeld's comment. The applicant is, of course, more than happy to explore with the adjacent property owner how we can provide screening. This is the first we've heard of the request, so I do think we need to evaluate what the space is and where we can accommodate it and what type of plantings there will be. But we are more than happy, I think, as you've heard, the applicants really do have a vested interest in being good neighbors because they live in the community, they want their kids to be proud of this project, and so more than happy to accommodate that. And so I'll conclude. We agree with the findings in the staff report and the conditions and modifications with the recommended changes that ELSA presented today, and we'd be happy to answer any other questions the board may have.

Thank you so much. Thank you for your presentation. Just a couple things. One is a clarification with staff and one of the conditions or corrections or you wanted to add that potential for demolition before they got like building permit. And also you talked about and related site infrastructure. Does that mean they can install related site infrastructure before getting a building or demo and whatever is currently their related site infrastructure? I didn't understand which one.

Sure. So the language came from the applicant. My sense is that because there's so much paving on the site, paving is not a structure, so I would assume it meant building and paving.

Yeah, the intent of that modification to the condition is to allow the applicant to remove the existing structures and existing infrastructure, not construct new infrastructure.

Okay, that's what I thought, but I just should be, you know, make sure.

There are two separate permits. One is demolition permit and one is a building permit. And they can do the demolition permit and demolish And that is, again, based on the requirements from DPS. And they definitely, after they demolish, they have to stabilize the site. So they could demolish it, bring it to the grade, and then they have to stabilize the site until they get their building permit that they can start the construction. I don't think these things have foundation. Sometimes there is also a foundation permit, but I don't think you have that.

Agreed. As I just meant, existing site infrastructure now. Okay. The other, so yep, I appreciate you. We definitely need more housing. And so I'm supportive of the housing. In terms of the stormwater management, my question is, I mean, I feel that based on you increasing the perviousness or decreasing the imperviousness that the stormwater management will be improved. with also the green features, the environmental features that is better than what you have now, what's going on there now. And I understand that when you go for your final stormwater management permit, whatever, the DPS, do they look Do they look at existing conditions not on this? I'm just trying to understand what does DPS is mainly interested in the site itself or how it fits into the overall in terms of stormwater management?

Yeah, I think if we have Alex still on the call, I think Alex Weintraub from DPS Stormwater can answer that.

Hi there. Yes, so. What we'll look at at final design is the stormwater management of each of these lots and any improvements in the right-of-way. So we will review those, of course, sediment control associated with that development, and also separately before if the applicant wishes to choose to submit for a demolition. We will also then, of course, look at sediment control at that time. Of course, not storm management for that because that's just demolition. Your question, if you could repeat it, please. You had a question about just the scope, I suppose?

No, no. Some community members were concerned about the existing conditions, whether they came from the property or not. I don't know. Were they exacerbated by what's on the property? I know that this property that The proposed property will create less, but what about the existing conditions not related to this potential of this property? That is looked at separately somewhere else. How does that look? If people have drainage issues in the community, that's not part of this application, correct?

If I'm understanding you correctly, yes, I believe that is correct. However, you know, as part of our conceptual review, you know, we did request information about the downstream storm system, which receives runoff from the existing development, and which, you know, we were explained that what is proposed is a reduction, of course. As part of my conditional approval letter, I actually did include an item about figuring out with either Department of Transportation or with Army Corps of Engineers what they would require at time of final design to make sure that the receiving storm system has sufficient capacity. Now, to kind of address what I believe you were mentioning about any downstream concerns about runoff. So again, that was part of our, partially part of our review in that the current runoff from the property enters the system in Garter Boulevard and travels to the west, which does not go across the street into the community that is directly south And what was again proposed was the reduction of overall runoff. And of course, with a treatment by stormwater management for water quality, and as part of that, also water quantity. And that runoff is going to go into the same system, which again travels to the west.

Okay, thank you. Maybe east, maybe west, but it's okay. And my last question to Steph is that in a CRT zone, you can have residential. So I have no problems with that. It's part of the CRT zone. But are you, in order to... have the five units, or we have to use some of the C to get the density for the five units, or none of the C is being used in the calculation of density for this?

So the four live-work units are all commercial density. Okay. They are in the use table in the zoning ordinance as a commercial use. And so only the single-family house closest to MacArthur is using the residential density.

Okay, great, great. So I'm supportive of this project. There will be less runoff, right, than before. And it's what... Not now, ma'am. So there is, and it meets the requirements in the CRT zone. So that is, and also, as Ms. Rosenfeld said, if you, this in terms of screening from the adjacent properties, I don't know what the zone currently has you're supposed to do, but if the applicant is willing to work with the adjacent neighbors to do some prudent screening That would be wonderful, yeah.

So what I would suggest is that there's a condition in the site plan that includes the things to be included on the certified site plan is to allow for modifications to landscaping along the property boundary per these discussions so that were they to be able to come to an agreement, it would be documented on the certified site plan. They would need to amend anything.

OK. OK, thank you. Okay, great. Would that be a modified condition?

It would be a new condition that when you get the resolution in a couple of weeks, it would be part of that.

Perfect. Okay. I'd like to hear from my fellow board members on this.

I have a comment. I appreciate the community members coming in to make comments with regards to their interest in the new development and the concerns with regards to storm water runoff. But based upon the information we received here today, I think the storm water management will be better with a new development there. I'd like to commend Mr. Rupert and Mr. Woodward for taking a risk and to make a small development in a community, an oasis such as this one, to give people an opportunity to live where larger developers might not take that risk. You've decided to take the risk to share in your community, and I commend you for it. Traditionally, I've been against these kind of developments, but I think repurposing a commercial parcel for residential parcel opens up housing opportunities in a neighborhood that weren't traditionally there. And you taking on the risk and providing housing in a part of Montgomery County where other people have not taken the risk or the burden to reduce the housing burden is commendable. And I'd like to thank you for taking that risk.

I think this design is frankly, Mr. Rupert, is a very beautiful design. It's a compromise, and I really like that. Frankly, you can come to my neighborhood as long as you keep the same vigor. It's really done, and I think that I know the community concern, but I think that, frankly, we see a lot of development here. The vigor they have, they live in the same neighborhood. So that would be the best opportunity for everyone to make something out of that area that is there. I just want to clarify a few things because that's what I have been doing. Stone water management is separate than stone drainage. We have discussed that. There's a lot of confusion in that regard. Mr. Rupert, probably they know that this is for water quality. The 70% that it was impervious and now it's 47%, it makes the water quality better. It does impact a little bit of stone drainage, but is not a thing to decide about the stone drainage. Stone drainage goes downhill. It's going to happen. The only thing that Mr. Rupert has to do to make sure that their engineers certify that they have done the right thing in the drainage design. Whatever we do, there is nothing that we can change. Water runs downhill. It's going to run downhill. And they are not increasing the imperviousness to contribute to any additional drainage. That's the fact. But at the same time, by reducing the imperviousness, they make the water quality better. And that's a very good idea. A lot of people think that I heard about some way where you remove, and especially with the site design, when you remove the imperviousness, you design the stone water management within the site as much as possible. And this is what I have seen that they have been doing. I do support this development. I think it's a very nice balance. between work, life, commercial, and also the neighborhood in Cabin John, and also adds a place for people that they are working, hopefully they can live in the same space, as the examples that you mentioned, that is very ideal.

Any other questions, comments from the board members?

No, I think it's a good and creative, legitimate use of the CRT zone that's there, what it's for. Honestly, I hope we see more of these. in these spaces. They're good developments. They're tight. They're filling spaces that wouldn't be filled with much else. And I think it's clear from the history that we can't wave a magic wand and put a commercial space of any type in a spot and hope that it lives and it just won't happen. So this is something that's got a reasonable chance to be sustainable in that place as nothing else has been. So I think it's good. I'm supportive of the project.

Vice Chair Linden. Yeah, just briefly. Yeah, I share a lot of the same thoughts that have been already said. There's a lot to like about this project, a lot of it you already mentioned. And this is a unique site, clearly, and it's also a rare opportunity to put, you know, as Commissioner Hedrick mentioned, sort of tightly packed but still attractive and appealing homes for people in a really appealing attractive desirable neighborhood right and it's it's a chance to welcome more people into a neighborhood that a lot of people want to live in clearly like you're very proud to live in your neighborhood all the neighbors showed up here because you're all you all love your neighborhood a lot this is a chance for you know five ten depending if they have families it's a chance for a lot of people to join and i think that's something to be celebrated um So I just wanted to point that out. The green roofs are great. It improves the stormwater management. The drainage, apparently the drainage is what it is. But I take the concern that sometimes when the status quo is challenging, like with the ditch that's confronting MacArthur and it fills up with water all the time, It's easy to be fearful or at least anxious about what a change will mean to an existing challenging situation. And I think that what you've described is very clearly going to make it better. Removing imperviousness goes a long, long way to say nothing of the green roof, to say nothing of the stormwater facilities that you'll put in place. I know it's hard to sort of take that leap of faith and just assume it's going to work out. but the status quo is a surface parking lot. That is the worst possible stormwater management. It's not a facility. It's the worst possible stormwater management surface, and this will change that, so I think that's a huge positive. The last thing I just wanted to note, you know, the comments about kind of losing this commercial space or a space that has changed over time with different commercial uses Um, I, I, I sympathize with that. Um, because particularly in these areas, you know, there are others nearby, but at the same time, they're not always proximate to where people live. You know, MacArthur is not a particularly like pleasant or safe road to like walk down or bike down. So there are accessibility challenges to commercial or retail areas, but that's also one of the reasons why with a lot of like the planning that the planning department does, is to try to introduce more of those opportunities into neighborhoods that clearly want and need them. That's outside the scope of this application. But a lot of our work focuses on bringing people closer to the places that they want to use on a daily basis. And I think this is a perfect example of how the communities express an interest in having more things closer to them. The zoning and the existing land use makes that challenging. But I'm really encouraged to hear that that's an interest from this community, because I think that we can carry that forward with other planning exercises. The master plan, which has been referenced here today, it's 30 years old, right? It's an old master plan. It wasn't really anticipating a lot of these more contemporary needs or desires. So maybe there's a chance, you know, to revisit this in a future master plan amendment. I'm just speculating. I'm not saying that there will be. But it's encouraging to hear. That's an interest. And so I just wanted to note that as well. And that's the focus of a lot of our work.

Okay.

Hearing no other comments or questions from the commissioners, we have to have two votes here. And the big picture, and hopefully you're hearing that this there will be less runoff on this site than before. No, sir. No.

Move to approve the preliminary plan with conditions. Yeah.

I second.

Yeah. So there are two votes, the motion to approve the preliminary plan with conditions and corrections.

Yeah, with conditions and corrections as provided by staff.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. The ayes have it. 5-0. Is there a motion to approve the forest conservation plan with the staff recommended approval with conditions? I'm sorry. Oh, is there a site plan? I'm sorry. Oh, I'm thinking. OK.

Is there a motion to approve the site plan with conditions?

Move to approve the site plan with conditions.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. The ayes have it. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you for coming out and providing your testimony. And we will take a three-minute break and start with our next item, item number 13, the Elmer School Farm Administrative Subdivision and Forest Conservation Plan. Thank you. Item number 13, the Elmer School Farm Administrative Subdivision Plan and Forest Conservation Plan, where staff is recommending approval with conditions. This afternoon, we have Jane Perser presenting this item. Welcome.

Thank you. Good afternoon, members of the board. For the record, I am Jane Pizer, planner with Up County, leader viewer for 620260010 with concurrent final forest conservation plan F20260010. Per the subdivision ordinance, this application is an administrative subdivision plan, but it's for a lot greater than five acres in the agricultural zone. So that requires planning board approval, which is why I'm here today. Staff recommends approval with conditions for both the administrative subdivision plan and the final forest conservation plan to subdivide the existing parcels. The subdivision will create two lots for one new residential detached unit and one existing residential detached unit. The property is located northeast of the intersection of Club Hollow Road and Elmer School Road, which are both classified as rustic roads in the Elmer neighborhood of Dickerson. Surrounding properties are used primarily for agriculture and rural open space within the AR zone, and some lots are improved with single family dwellings and farm accessory structures. The subject property is located within the Broad Run watershed. Property is within the Agricultural Reserve, or AR zone, and is within the 1980 Preservation of Agricultural and Rural Open Space Functional Master Plan area, also called the AROS plan, which I will be referring to it as such throughout this presentation. Neighboring properties are also within the AR zone. The property is 210.52 acres total and has frontage along Elmer School Road with access proposed at two existing ingress and egress points along that road. The existing parcels were created by deed in 2001 with parcel 500 improved with an existing single family detached dwelling unit, a barn, and a driveway with access from Elmer School Road. The southern parcel, parcel 714, contains no built structures but has a small farm lane with access from Elmer School Road as well. The property contains 92.56 acres of forest, 24.06 acres of wetlands, 50.96 acres of stream valley buffer, and includes some small streams encompassed within the forested areas of the property. The applicant has fulfilled all required noticing obligations, including posting of the sign, mailing the notice of application, which happened on December 29, 2025. Staff has mailed the notice of public hearing and received no community correspondence regarding this application. The application proposes to create two new lots from two existing parcels. Lot one is highlighted on red on the graphic and will be 115.99 acres after dedication and is currently improved with an existing residential detached dwelling unit that will remain. The existing structure septic system will be modernized and moved to a new location to accommodate the upgrade. Lot 2, shown in blue, will be 91.26 acres after dedication, and will have one new detached dwelling unit with a new well and septic system. Shown in black in the dashed line on the graphic is the existing parcel line, and adjustments are proposed to keep farm fields intact under each lot, so the majority of each lot can be used for agricultural purposes. Both lots will have driveway access via Elmer School Road, and 3.27 acres will be dedicated along the frontage of both lots on Elmer School Road. There is also a proposed conservation easement located along the southern property boundary of Lot 2, which will be shown later in the presentation. Property, like I said earlier, is located northeast of the intersection of Elmer School Road and Club Hollow Road with frontage along Elmer School Road only. Per the 2023 Rustic Roads Functional Master Plan, Elmer School Road is classified as a rustic road with a 70-foot ultimate right-of-way width. The application proposes to dedicate 35 feet from the existing center line of the pavement, which is sufficient to achieve the ultimate right-of-way width along both lots. The Rustic Roads Advisory Committee also reviewed the plan and had no objections or comments on the January 22, 2026 meeting. Pictured on the slide are the current conditions of Elmer School Road looking north with the subject property's frontage on the right. The property is located within the 1980 arrows plan area and substantially conforms to the master plan by proposing development that is consistent with the requirements of the AR zone. Single family dwellings and accessory uses, including agricultural activities, are permitted uses within the AR zone. The Forest Conservation Plan total tract area is 210.52 acres, deducting 3.27 acres for right-of-way dedication and 195.25 acres for agricultural area. The net tract area for the Forest Conservation Plan is actually 12 acres. highlighted in yellow on the graphic. 5.33 acres of forest will be saved, 3.25 acres within the net tract area, and 2.08 acres outside the net tract area, which are shown on green in the graphic. For the findings, the administrative subdivision plan conforms to the 1980 Eros plan.

Sorry. I was trying to be quiet about that, but it didn't work. With the net tract and non-net, can you go back one slide? My apologies. I was just curious on the forest saved. So it's in the green here. Which is in the net tract and outside of the net tract area? Because I was curious about that. That 3.25 and 2.08... Because it all looks to be out of the net tract area to me, so I was just checking on how that was calculated.

I'm Doug Johnson, environmental planner. The net tract area, they took the, as you can see in the yellow color, the LODs for the buildings on lot one and lot two, There is a section of 22A, the minimum retention, and part of it, one part of that says, in an agriculture and resource area, onsite forest retention must equal 25% of the net tract. So that means a minimum retention must be three acres. They did that, and in the green area on this slide, at the very bottom, there's 3.25 acres they designated as on-site. As on-site, yeah. Now, to show that would get graphically confusing. So I just let it sit. It said, OK, 3.25 is considered net tract. And in addition to the LODs for lots two and lots one.

So it all works out. In addition to the LODs. So that's what's combined with the 3.25 that's saved as part of the net tract.

Yes, the 3.25 is the 2.08 acres. Not to get really confusing, but 1.04 acres was the ultimate reforestation requirement. Since it's considered off-site, outside the LODs, we double it. So it's 2.08 at that point. So they took that 2.08 plus the 3.25 and just pushed them together in a stream buffer, forced stream buffer at the bottom.

And forced stream buffer at the bottom. Yeah, that's interesting. Thank you. I appreciate the explanation. Really nothing more than my own curiosity for that. But thank you for...

And this was sort of, from staff's perspective, this was kind of like the optimal way of doing that, to push it together, to buffer. Was this suggestion coming from them, or is this kind of how staff work with them to kind of locate where it would be?

This actually came from the consultant. We've dealt with the consultant for a number of years, and they're well aware of our laws and requirements and procedures. So when they submitted the final forest conservation plan, they knew they were going to have to save at least three acres to meet this section of the code, and then whatever else is required with the forest conservation worksheet. So they automatically went ahead and did it. They knew we would probably ask for forested stream buffer to be saved. And so Dave McKee went ahead and front loaded all that into the plan. Yeah.

OK. Thank you.

For the findings, we find that it conforms to the 1980 ARROWS plan, public facilities are adequate, complies with all provisions of the subdivision regulations, the lots are appropriate with respect to size, shape, width, and orientation for the proposed use, complies with chapter 22A, forest conservation, and it meets the applicable development standards of the AR zone. Staff is recommending approval with conditions of both the administrative subdivision plan and the final forest conservation plan. That's the presentation. Thank you so much for your time. And both the applicant, myself, and Doug are available for any questions.

Yes. Thank you. So would the applicant like to make a presentation?

Just very briefly, Dave McKee, Benning & Associates. The applicant is also online here. But we're just here to say that we support the staff presentation and all the conditions. And happy to answer any questions.

Thank you so much. Any of the board members have any questions, comments?

Just one kind of process question. And I'm sorry if you mentioned this at the beginning, but this is an administrative approval that came to us. And that happens sometimes in other contexts. But what was the reason that this one had to come to us?

Yeah, so this one is a lot that is proposed that's over five acres in the AR zone, which means that the planning board has to take action on it.

Okay. Anything over five acres in the AR? Yes. Okay.

Do you want the exact code section? Okay.

We're trying to give as much of our work to Jason as possible.

So that specifically is for subdivisions in the AR zone for lots above five acres. But this was... I know this is a bit maybe a rabbit hole, but this was two parcels. So is the reason it was technically being subdivided because they were changing the boundary of one of them?

So they needed to turn them into buildable lots so they could build a house on one of them and also to make septic field improvements on the existing house.

Got it. Thanks. But with this forest conservation plan, would it have had to come to us regardless or no?

could have gone administrative, but because the admin sub is coming to the board, our policy has always been to package the whole thing as one complete package.

Okay. Great. Thank you. Well, thank you for presentation. I have no further questions. Any other board members have? Commissioner Bartley? Okay. So there's a – we'll do two motions. Is there – A motion to approve the administrative subdivision plan for Elmer's School Farm. Yeah, I'll move to approve the administrative subdivision plan.

I second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. The ayes have it. 5-0. Is there a motion to approve the forest conservation plan with conditions for the Elmer's School Farm property? Yeah. Move to approve the forest conservation plan as well with conditions.

I second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. The ayes have it. Thank you so much. We'll just take a quick break, one minute. Hang in there in your seats, and we're going to go to item number 14, water and sewer category change requests, May 2026, county council review group, where staff is recommending, transmitting recommendations to the county council. Thank you. Our last item of today, it's item 14, water and sewer category change request, May 2026, County Council Review Group, where staff is recommending transmitting comments to the County Council. And this afternoon, we have Haley Johnson and Mark Sembrowski presenting this item. Thank you.

Record, Mark Zaborski, Environmental Planner with the Environment and Climate Division. Before you today are four water and sewer category change requests. These change requests are initiated by property owners by applying to the Department of Environmental Protection, the lead agency for the county's water and sewer plan. DEP evaluates the applications in detail with analysis and comments from the Department of Permitting Services, Well and Septic Division, WSSC, the Planning Department, and the Department of Parks. These cases have been submitted to the county council by DEP because they require more in-depth analyses than those that are included in an administrative group, which are those cases that fit well within master plan guidance and policies within the county water and sewer plan. More controversial cases and any requests recommended for denial go to the county council for a decision. The county council will hold a public hearing on these cases on June 30th. State law requires that the planning department make recommendations for these requests based on whether the application conforms to the sewer and water service recommendations of the county comprehensive plan. The state wishes to avoid the extension of this type of infrastructure to low density areas that have not been planned and zoned for service. In a diverse county, it is not feasible or sustainable to provide service everywhere. Generally, it is the master plan that determines the areas that receive service. Today we will be reviewing four water and sewer category change requests. Planning staff recommends approval in one case because it aligns with recommendations in the area master plan and the water and sewer plan. Planning staff recommends denial in the other cases because sewer service is not supported by the master plan. Planning staff's recommendations align with the county executive's recommendations for these cases. The first case is located on Pining Meeting House Road. The site is a 1.5 acre property that is zoned RE2. It is located in the Potomac sub-region master plan. It is also located in the Piney Branch SPA. The category change request is from sewer category 6 to S3 to allow public sewer service. The master plan recommends providing community sewer service generally in conformance with the water and sewer plan service policies. Water and sewer plan policies generally exclude low density zones, such as RE2, not already approved for sewer service. The master plan allows for limited provision of sewer service for areas within or at the periphery of the proposed sewer service envelope, but excludes properties within the Piney Branch sub-watershed. The property does not meet either of these criteria. Furthermore, the water and sewer plan lists six conditions for sewer eligibility in the Piney Branch sub-watershed. Properties must satisfy at least one condition. Properties designated as sewer stages one or two in the 1980 Potomac sub-region master plan. Two, properties that the Piney Branch trunk sewer right of way either traverses or abuts. Three, properties with approval or conditional approval for sewer categories S1 or S3 as of December 3, 1991. Properties with documented public health problems resulting from failed septic systems. And five, properties that abut existing or approved sewer mains and which satisfy the policy requirements for Section 3G3 in the Water and Sewer Plan. And lastly, six, properties zoned RE2C located in the southeast corner of the intersection of Boswell Lane and Pining Meeting House Road, which develop using the cluster method. The property does not meet any of these conditions. As a result, the 2002 Potomac sub-region Master Plan and the current 10-year water and sewer plan do not support the requested sewer category change. The county executive's recommendation is for the existing category to remain as six, and that is also planning staff's recommendation. The second case is located on Clarksburg Road in Boyds. The site is a 5.7 acre property zoned RE1. It is located in the Ten Mile Creek Limited Amendment to the Clarksburg Master Plan. It is also located in the Ten Mile Creek SPA. The requested category changes from S6 to S3 to allow public sewer service. The master plan recommends properties within the master plan area not already receiving public service or recommended for public service are expected to use individual on-site water supply and or sewerage systems. The master plan also recommended amending the county's comprehensive water supply and sewer systems plan to support the extension of public water and sewer service to all properties in the Ten Mile Creek watershed that are recommended to be zoned R90, R200, CRT, CRN, and RNC. In a comprehensive category change resolution 18-66 that was passed in 2015 after the master plan, this property was not included in the amended sewer service area envelope. As a result, the proposed sewer category change is not consistent with the master plan. Under the water and sewer plan, qualifying private institutional facilities, the PIF policy, may receive sewer service. Only nonprofit private institutional facilities are eligible for consideration under the PIF policy. The applicant has confirmed to DEP that the assisted living facility will belong to a for-profit organization, not a PIF. As a result, the proposed sewer category change is also not consistent with the water and sewer plan. The county executive's recommendation was that the property remain in sewer category S6, and that is also the planning staff recommendation.

Sorry, just the question is that can the existing ground afford, accommodate a sewer for the assisted living? If we say denied, can they still build the assisted living with the sewer? Do they have space? I don't know how big it is.

They would have to go with a septic system, I believe.

And they accommodate that, because it's big, probably. I don't know if they have enough land. That's the question.

Yeah, this is Tim Williamson. I'm with the Department of Environmental Protection Water Supply and Wastewater Unit, Planning Specialist 3. And we don't know the exact size of septic system that would be needed, but we expect that it would take up a lot of land area, as it requires a drain field area and two additional reserve areas in the case of a failure of the initial one. So a significant portion of the property would be taken up by the septic system to serve an assisted living facility. So sewer definitely enables this.

So they may not be able to do the work, the building. That's quite possible.

I'm not sure, but it's possible. So one of the things, they may have to come back. If they're denied, then I'm not sure they would come back. And they'd have to figure it out, right? And then maybe they'll come back and say, They can petition. I don't know what they say. But one of the questions, why don't we take this one by one? The first one, so we don't get too far away from us, if you don't mind, the first one, they didn't meet the requirements. You said they didn't count executives. Are we OK with the board? I mean, just so we can just do them, check them off. When was that? I mean, I'm fine with that. I don't know if the other board members. There's no speakers for this. Is there a speaker for this? The first one? There was no speaker for that. Only the Spencerville one, right? Are we OK with the board, the first one?

Yeah.

Okay, let's go to this. Now we're on this one. My only question, though, the second one is why does a nonprofit have an advantage over a for-profit? Why did they set up the law that way? Do you know?

Frankly, I have asked that question many times, and I think that there is no, I guess, technical reason for that. I believe it's more something to give away for institutional facilities.

Yes, the PIF policy has a very long history in the water sewer plan, going back to the 1980s, and it's been modified and made more restrictive as we've gone along. But the basic requirement is that the institution receiving the approval for water and sewer must be nonprofit. In other words, it must be qualified under the Internal Revenue Service 501 , meaning they're nonprofit. We have seen many cases come through that, while they're institutional, schools, elder care centers, things like that, but they are for profit. They don't qualify under that nonprofit status. The council many years ago decided that those institutions that are nonprofit should get a little bit of additional consideration for water and sewer service in our water and sewer plan.

Thank you.

I have one more question. So if they get denied, because I understand what you're saying, but I'm sitting here and saying, okay, assisted living is a public service that is good for the community to have. I understand the difference between profit or non-profit, but service is a service. So what is the recourse? If we say no, And they cannot do that. So can they appeal? What is the appeal process that they can build it and get the sewer?

If they get denied in this process and stay in category S6, then they have to work with the Department of Permitting Services Well, a septic to determine whether or not there is suitable area on the property for a septic system that will meet their needs.

Assuming is no. The answer is no. What is the recourse?

If DPS says no?

Well, DPS just look at the size, and the size doesn't accommodate. If they have to make the size so big, I don't know, because this, depending on how many bedrooms they have to provide, and this is a facility, it's going to be a lot. So it may completely make them that they're not able to build it, The question is that if that's the case, do they have a recourse, or they just have to say they can't do it?

They can apply again. She says she knows. Wait a second. Okay. Oh, she's the applicant? Yeah, yeah. Yes. Why don't you come on up, please, then? Yeah. Please sit down and you can state your name and you have, what, three minutes? You have no time? Okay, you can take all day. No, don't take all day.

Okay, thank you. My name is Susana. I'm applying for... Can you hear me now? Yes, please. Okay, thank you. My name is Susina. I am applying to change the water system from sewer to public because we are planning to establish assisted living home. And I put all the decks and the detail on the document. So I submitted all the deck that necessary, which is this as you can see. So we have 7.5 acre. So we are planning to build a 40 beds assisted living home. We were thinking to go for septic, but Digging the land for 40 beds is going to take a lot of space, and it's not good for environment, digging that amount for septic. So it's better to go for public and then continue. Just like you mentioned earlier, this is public service as well. We have also a lot of couple of, not a lot, couple of 55 and 65 plus community that area. So when people leave after 65 from that area, in my opinion, I believe everybody would agree, seniors, they don't have to go somewhere far that the, kids and grandkids can easily visit them. So this is the right place to build this establishment. So that's why we selected this location. This is the rendering, what we are planning to do. So it is not an idea to put septic on the land. It will be easy and convenient for environment for all of us if we can get connected to public. And the whole entire area, they have public connection. This area is my property is the one not having that connection. So I'm requesting that.

Yeah, this is a nice facility, and that's why I'm saying that if we deny it, then we're taking something that is a public service away.

Yeah, I mean, if you see, I mean, we all are going to reach to that point anyways. It doesn't matter. It's the time matter. So we have a lot of facilities, 65 and 55 plus buildings. It has, like, hundreds of residents living in there. Imagine this community, they live there six or seven years independently. Then after that, when they graduate from this section too, why are we going to send them somewhere far? They can stay the same place where they are. And then at the same time, not only that 55-plus community, the new community that they are moving in, their new houses, like hundreds of houses are building. So those people, they have, obviously, they have parents, grandparents. So we don't want those people also to go and visit their family somewhere far. That would help. the seniors to be connected very close to their family member so we don't have to send them far. And then it brings, I don't think it's, it's very nice building if we put a lot of work and everything in there.

Well, thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Do anyone have any questions of the applicant? So my question is, what would it take for them to go to the council? How would they do it? They're not a non-profit, but because of the use, it's a... Yes.

Allen Sukup with DEP. The last time we updated the water and sewer plan, which was in 2022, the council decided to add a new policy to the plan that was referred to, I think, as the commercial service policy. This would have allowed uses that were zoned for commercial development or were actually commercial uses within a reasonable range of the existing infrastructure to be considered for public water and sewer. And the main reason for that consideration was the two cases over at the corner of Glen Road and Piety Meeting House Road, the old White House Country Inn, and the Potomac Oak Shopping Center. The council crafted that policy that would satisfy the needs of those two sites in particular. When it went up to Baltimore to the Department of the Environment MDE Denied those that policy and took it out of the plan They felt that we had not sufficiently researched the implications of the policy So we will we will go back and see if the council wants to try this again But right now there is no

for-profit commercial service policy in the water and sewer plant yeah so uh i would recommend i mean i'm just talking aloud to the board maybe there's a we can't is maybe recommend that for maybe they almost like a zta when they do it for a certain thing is there like you could say for senior facility. I don't know. It's commercial, but if the niche is for senior or something like that with Would they open the door for that?

I was going to ask a question. I'm trying to make sure I'm understanding it. Sewer and water is available to all of the plots that are in red surrounding the application plot. And I know we've come before to different, when we've had the water and sewer come before us, that adjacent properties, properties that are adjacent to certain access are usually allowed in or allowed to do it if they wouldn't otherwise be. Is there a reason that this one's not in the envelope, or the water and sewer is not to those red properties yet. Is that what I'm understanding? And they're adjacent and eligible, but this one would not be. I'm just trying to get a clearer idea here. Because I know we've talked about ones that are across the street piping that goes down them are adjacent to a property that is zoned for sewer and water. I'm trying to understand the reason that, I mean, I can kind of see the applicant's point that it's a little niche inside a whole surrounding of eligible property.

It's based on the zoning. OK. The properties that are in this empty area, I was going to say empty. There are houses there, obviously. But the properties that are outside the red envelope on our mapping, And the master plan, the 10 Mile Creek amendment to the Clarksburg master plan was very specific that these were not included in the plan service envelope. So you've got several of these little enclaves up along the west side of Clarksburg Road. that were zoned RE1, based primarily on the existing lots of parcel sizes. And as they might eventually end up being adjacent to new sewer mains, there's a possibility under the policies that we have in the plan now that we could consider them for public sewer service. If they end up having nonprofit uses on the property, then we can also look at that from that standpoint. This area does not have the policy that Potomac does about the peripheral sewer service.

That was a Potomac-specific policy we've discussed in the past.

That's only in Potomac.

Okay. It's not, but we don't have, that's not a general peripheral policy based on. It's not countywide. Okay.

How difficult it is just this area put a request to change from RE2 to RE1? Point of view. I don't know, but I frankly cannot support. I don't know what it means if we don't support. I don't know, but I cannot just support it because Regardless of whatever it is, it's not right. So we have these policies or these, I don't know what I call it, zoning ordinance or things that 99% or 98% of the time they make sense. It happens that there is 1% or 2% outlier there. And I'm just sitting there, and I just cannot bring my conscience to say no to this.

So why don't we hear from some of the other board members. I would recommend just we move forward with the recommendations that the staff had, but put in a transmittal that we feel that for public, this is like a public, needed public service, assisted living, and that there could be some exception for that in the next, I mean, just like they do for ZTA or some other, just kind of push WSSC or whatever for that. But I want to hear from the other board members.

Can I make a quick recommendation? Sorry, just for the Transmittal Letter for that point. I'm sorry, I've been going back and forth and trying to make sure that I'm understanding it. The actual distance proximity to sewer and water lines is not far, as far as I can tell, right? Were this Potomac, we would probably be having a proximity discussion.

This is just a few hundred feet. OK. They would need to acquire an easement. through the intervening HOA property. Which may be an issue, but OK. It's not as difficult as, say, the Potomac Oak Center.

I was going to say, that was 1,000 feet, something like that? It was a long way, maybe more?

Um, the ones in Potomac, uh, at the crossroads, uh, both need extensions on the order of one mile.

Oh, good Lord. Okay. So I was way off, but long. Um, yeah, it was just, sorry for the point of a transmittal letter. I think that there's a reasonable, we're a little boxed in with the existing policy, but I think it's worth pointing out possibly in a transmittal letter that Other similar parts of the counties have a policy in place on the master plan to allow for cases such as this. They would still have to require these, and if I remember correctly, pay per linear foot. Is that correct? There's a cost per linear foot to connect?

Yes. For a short extension like this, it's probably... more than $500 per linear foot.

OK. The point being, they would still have to invest money to connect to the sewer to pay for the cost of those extensions and connections?

Under WSSC's policies, they have to pay for the extension themselves.

OK. Just to the point, Chair, I think it's worth putting in that there are other parts of the county which have a policy to address edge cases like this. Any extension would be covered by the cost of the applicant, and there's a reasonable proximity to both sewer and water connection, if I'm getting this correct. We are kind of boxed in with the thing, but I think it might be worth putting in the transmittal letter.

I'll point out that in this case, I'm trying to see my map here, this is within the RNC zone area. There's not a lot of development planned for this area. All that density was pushed up to the north. So even though they're adjacent to the envelope, sewer would not be coming from, it would be coming from across Clarksburg Road.

And eventually, all of this area

in Ten Mile Creek around this enclave, we'll go back to category six. Once we have all the mapping done for the development within 10 Mount Creek.

Within 10 Mount Creek.

Yeah.

Yeah, just an excellent point, I think, and also that, I mean, I think it'd just be worth giving the applicant an opportunity to make a case to who they need to make a case to for, you know, a practical application. I think that I would not want to see the septic system that would cover a 40-unit. I think that would be. Possibly also environmentally an issue and things like that. I think it's worth giving, I think, the applicant at least information and knowledge needed to make the case to where it needs to be made at that point. So just my point to the chair.

So... Ask a quick process question. The way this, I know we've been through this before, but the way this works from here is we make a recommendation to council. Council then takes into consideration our recommendation, the county executive's recommendation, and then they make a recommendation to WSSC. Is that it?

No. The council's T&E committee will consider the testimony provided on these cases. and the agency recommendations, planning board, county executive primarily, and develop a draft resolution to send to the county council, the full county council. The council will make a decision on that resolution. It then goes from the council up to MDE for consideration. And whatever we do in the water and sewer plan has to be acceptable to MDE. We are acting under their authority. It's not like master plans. And we've already got WSSE's comments on how this might be served. So it's not that we're asking WSSC for permission. We're saying, okay, this is something that we want to serve. You've indicated that service is feasible. The applicant can go ahead and ask for service. S3.

Yeah. So in terms of do we do a transmittal letter with accepting staff's recommendations, just based on what we're hearing, it's pretty clear that the policy is the policy. And it does feel difficult to make a recommendation outside of the policy. But if our intent through the transmittal letter is to get the county council to make a different recommendation or to get the committee to make a different recommendation to the council, which would then make the resolution that contradicts both us and the county executive and to say, yes, we want this to MDE.

Whatever you all decide. Yeah. Even if it's something that you're putting in the transmittal sort of as a side comment, the T&E committee needs to deal with that. They need to address that. because the council will ask, why is the planning board saying something different here? We tend to use policy. We tend to use zoning policy as how our decisions have been made. But that doesn't mean that the council could not consider another kind of permutation on this commercial service policy that they would like to promote to the state.

I think what I'm sort of getting at, and maybe I'm coming to this idea as I'm talking now, but this process, is it fair to compare this process a little bit to the mandatory referral process in the sense that we're not making a regulatory decision here. We're taking into consideration policy and guidance and zoning, or not zoning, but policy and guidance. And because of that, I think I feel comfortable making a recommendation in line with what we would actually hope would happen and not make one recommendation with a transmittal letter that actually says, actually, we know we said no, but you should consider these things, which to me feels a little muddled. introduces more questions for the committee when they consider this.

I second that if you move it to that. I think that's what we should do. If there is a possibility to do the right thing, I think we should do that. If you move on, or I can move on, then I second.

Well, I hear what you're saying. And whatever the board wants to do, it does. But I was saying that based on the policy, meet. It doesn't meet, right? It does not meet. So my point, it does not meet. I agree with the county exec and the planning staff that it does not meet the policy. However, we feel because of the use, the public purpose of the use, they should revisit that commercial and a commercial service policy to include a use like this so that these types of projects can move forward. That's kind of what I meant.

And I support that, but I think what we're talking about almost flips it on its head. So instead of saying maintain S6, we'll say actually change. And in the transmittal letter, we say We recognize this does not be policy staff recommended to maintain because it does not be policy. And here are the reasons why we think that you as council should consider changing some version of that.

So Mr. Bartlett, what are your thoughts?

All captured it beautifully. This is a private facility with the public interest in it. So I think you all have captured it beautifully. It's a private facility with the public intent and purpose, and I think that there should be some flexibility. I think you guys have discussed the issue well. Thanks.

Okay, so then why don't we do this? I appreciate what the Vice Chair and Commissioner Petterm said, and if you make a motion to that, I would I would support that for that reason.

Why don't you motion you talk better? What you said is exactly what I want. So you say it, I second it.

OK, I'll see if I can get this right. We can kind of workshop this. So I'll move to recommend changing to S3. Is that it? S3? Yes. and transmitting that recommendation to county council. In addition, including a transmittal letter that acknowledges the staff recommendation, acknowledges the policy that underpins the staff recommendation, and that we're going against that and explaining some of the reasons why we think this is a policy. desirable instance of, or explain our position that the policy is problematic and this is a desirable exception to that policy. I second. Because of the public purpose of this.

Yeah. Yeah.

OK.

I second it.

All right. All in favor? Aye. OK. Let's go on to the next one.

Thank you so much.

The next case is located on New Hampshire Avenue in Spencerville. The site is a 8.98-acre property that is split-zoned, RE1 and RC. It's located in the Cloverlee Master Plan, and the requested category change is from S6 to S1 under the Water and Sewer Plan's PIF policy to allow access to an abutting sewer main. It's on the edge of the planned sewer envelope and is currently served by public water and a private septic system. The property consists of three parcels, split-zoned RE1 and RC, and is divided respectively between the Northwest Branch Watershed, which is the RE1 portion, and the Patuxent River Watershed, RC. Due to a recent fire, the current church building will be torn down and replaced with a new building. The church was originally constructed. WSSC approved a sewer main installation in New Hampshire Avenue in front of the applicant's property. Part of the existing building and existing parking facilities sit within both zones and both watersheds. The water and sewer plan policies generally do not provide for the extension of community sewer surface to areas zoned RE1, except as recommended by local area master plans. The master plan does recommend such an exception for RE1 properties where sewer service can be provided from existing mains within the Northwest Branch or Paint Branch watersheds. This property meets this criterion. Community water service without sewer service within the Patuxent watershed can also be considered on a case-by-case basis, consistent with the current policies in the county's water and sewer systems plan, such as the private institutional facility or PIF policy. The master plan recommends providing community service sewer service generally in conformance with water and sewer plan service policies. As a result, the proposed sewer category change is consistent with both the master plan and the water and sewer plan. County executive recommendation is to approve the change to category S1, and that is also the planning staff recommendation.

Thank you so much. We have the applicant here wanting to make a presentation, please.

Good afternoon, Chair Harris, members of the board. For the record, Elizabeth Rogers, law firm of Lurk Trillium Brewer. Good to see you again. I'm here today on behalf of the Spencerville Seventh Day Adventist Church. With me here today is Chad Stewart, the senior pastor, and Kevin Foster with GLW, the applicant's engineer. We're requesting a sewer category change to facilitate connection to the abutting sewer system. I'll be brief, because staff did a good job giving an overview. But the church was founded 85 years ago. And for the past 45 years, they have been providing a place of worship for the community on this property. Unfortunately, the church caught fire in 2024, and it resulted in irreparable loss to the front portion of the church. And even those portions of the building that could be potentially salvageable from an economic perspective were a complete loss. So the building actually was just recently demolished. Over the last couple of years, the church has been working closely with our congregation and the community to fundraise and plan for the church's reconstruction on the property. And the requested sewer category change is obviously one step in that direction towards achieving that goal. As staff had mentioned in the interim, since the church was originally constructed, sewer was actually extended up right in front of this property in connection with the construction of a gasoline service station just south of here. And so now that that infrastructure exists, we're seeking a category change that allows us to utilize that infrastructure in connection with the reconstruction instead of the septic, which the church has been on. And we request approval of this. And we believe it's in conformance, as the staff had mentioned, with the master plan and the water policy. Thank you.

Thank you so much, the board. I'm in support of this, the staff's and the county's X recommendation. I assume you are too. Okay, okay, great, thank you. Okay, the last one, please.

The last case is located on Moncaster Mill Road in Derwood. The site is a two-acre property zoned RE2. It is located in the Upper Rock Creek master plan. The requested category change is from S6 to S1 to enable sewer service for two new apartments and an existing single-family home that is currently on septic. The plan recommends providing community sewer service generally in conformance with water and sewer plan service policies. The master plan states that this will generally exclude areas zoned for low density development, RE1 and RE2, not already approved for service from further extension of community service. um the county executive recommendation is to maintain the current category of s6 because it is not consistent with the water and sewer plan policies or the master plan recommendations and the planning staff is also the same to maintain s6

I don't think we have anyone here to... Okay, no applicant on this one. So I'm supportive of county execs and the planning staff's recommendation.

Well, here we go again. Sorry. We are sitting here and all the time pulling our hair to have more housing. And this is that they want to put Two apartments here. I don't know how many housing. And we just flatly reject it.

Well, I mean, I'm honestly with you on that. That's the reason it zoned RE1 and RE2 is so that we don't do that. I mean, that's the reason that there's low density. I know. It's the reason low density zoning was chosen. If it were a reasonable zoning applied to it, we wouldn't be having these conversations. It wouldn't be .

I know that when we were doing all the housing, they say that places that they have. But I do not know how easy it is to connect this to sewer.

Whether they can have accessory apartments on this property as I understand it, would be the subject of a conditional use approval. It's not a water and sewer issue, although water and sewer is involved, because to do what they want to do, they really need public service. Those two apartments were installed, as we understand, without that conditional use approval. And so they need to go back and go through that process. But at this point, even though many of the properties around them have been approved for public sewer service, those are all exceptions. They're all public or on-site system problems or the sewer line coming down from Magruder High School along Moncaster Mill abuts these properties and actually goes through a couple of them, just not this one. Now, the property owner has a parcel in front that has been approved for public service, although they really can't build on it, as we understand. So they may need to do some of their deeds to bring these two properties together.

If that happens, they would then have access to sewer, correct? Yes.

But as of yet, they have not done that. And so we can't approve something that is perspective.

And we don't know much about it. Yeah, there's nothing that came with this about this. So that's why I don't know what these properties are, what they're trying to do. So once they come back in, what are these properties? Do you know? The proposed?

I don't know that there's anything proposed on these properties right now, at least that it has been in front of us. And I don't mean to muddy the discussion. The water-sewer category change, I don't think, predetermines that they're that they can only do senior housing or they can only do housing. It's whatever use is proposed in that zone. So I don't think it predetermines what they can do. It either allows the hookup or it doesn't. And I think that may be the same case for the other ones that you've already reviewed, that it's not the use itself that is in front of us. It's the... the water and sewer capacity that's going for that site.

And we're making a bit of a point. There are only a few cases, a few policies in the water and sewer plan where it dictates what is allowed, like a private institutional facility or a public facility. But in most residential situations, it's whatever the zoning and the land use allows. Whether or not he's allowed to have two accessory apartments on his property, that's not our decision. Our decision is, can he get public sewer to this property?

And given the current state of the property and the policies we have in place, the answer to that is no.

Actually, he has public sewer on the property in the front. So they wouldn't even need to build an extension. They would just need to make a very long on-site house utility.

Thank you for giving us that information. That's very helpful.

I think, in general, we're making kind of a bit of a fine distinction here, but there's, I think, a difference between a proposal, a plan for a proposal of a use of a property that is private but but a reasonably decent community use and has plans run up as opposed to somebody who has two apartments that are not permitted through conditional use on their place and wants water and sewer. And I assumed from the thing, the apartments are small ADU units. I assume not. Maybe, maybe not. Doesn't matter. But, yeah, I mean, this is a case for an administrative subdivision reworking if they want water or sewer to those properties, I think, rather than a case of making a larger case about SX or S1. Okay. All right.

I'm good with that. I mean, we're ready to move on. Okay. So we're consistent. Mm-hmm. County exec said no, staff said no, we say no, OK?

OK. Great.

Is there anything else we need to go over?

The next step is just to transmit the board's recommendation to the county council, and that concludes the presentation.

Ms. Weiss, you have enough. Do we need to vote anymore on anything, or are we good? We said... Okay. Yes. Great. Is there a motion on the four cases we discussed?

I really want to make a motion of transmitting all the things we just said. I don't know if that's the appropriate way to make that motion. Yeah, motion to transmit our comments and approvals to the county council on the four just discussed here based on the comments today.

Second. Correct, because we were consistent on one, three, and four, and we're different on number two. Great. Okay, great. There's a motion. All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. The ayes have it. Thank you so much. This ends our planning board meeting for today. Thanks, everyone.

We will be back to you later this year with the comprehensive update of the water and sewer plan.

We love that. Thank you so much. Everyone have a great week, and we'll see you next Thursday. Thank you.