Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

okay all right I'm going to bring to order the January 8th monthly board meeting of the Montgomery County Planning Commission um name Scott BR executive director and our first item of business before we get items will be a reorganization of board and election of officers uh so I'm going to hold or ask for nominations uh for board chair director I'll make a recommendation that youo stepen Klein for chairperson of the montgomer County Planning Commission for the county year of 2025 thank you John uh any other nominations all right and all in favor of Ste stepen Klein serving as board Chair say I anyos all right uh Steve thank you that to you appreciate the uh support of all the board members thank you very much so with that one we'll uh for was there a second under motion there was not you we do a revote sure please all in favor of Stephen K and back to with that we'll look for look for nominations for vice chair nomination chair I'll nominate D FL for 25 mve second or any other nominations for vice chair nominations are closed all those in favor fory will serve as Vice chair for cend year 2025 say I post okay and then our last officer for calendar here would be is there a motion to for a secretary for the Montgomery County

Planning Commission I'll make a motion to appoint Scott France as Secretary of the Planning Commission there a second second seconded are there any other nominations for secretary see none nominations are closed all those in favor for Scott Franc Ser as Secretary of the Planning Commission say hi hi we done with the um nominate with organization uh we'll move on to any other any board comments any board comments from memb in the room i' just like to say that I um really enjoy Stephen doy as being the leader of the Planning Commission I think they do a fabulous job um I uh felt like a newcomer when I was a newcomer here they uh they welcome me with open arms uh they're always available to talk if I need to talk uh to them about issues outside of a regular board meeting um I um enjoy the camaraderie of uh the board that they initiate and and uh Prosper um so I'm very happy that they're the chair and vice chair was here any other board comments nope are there any public comments before we get into our agenda public comments from people in the room any public comments from the notice on anybody okay uh before we get before we go into the approval of minutes let the record show that we uh we currently have five members in the room uh Sandra douy Jonathan John Ernst and myself and then

online we have Bob blue and Nicole is oped on okay and oped is excused uh today so with that is there motion to approve the board meeting minutes uh for our regular monthly board meeting of December 11 2024 so mov it's been moved second second excuse me it's been moved in second or any comments or corrections to the meeting seeing none all those in favor to approve the meeting minutes I I meeting minutes have been passed um then we have formation of our committees uh I just wanted to make a comment about this um last year was the first year that we only had um two committees to fill and we'll have the same this year because of the transportation committee um in past years for several years uh each board member served on at least one committee um because we had 10 spots to fill between the transportation committee the Montgomery Awards committee and the Mona 2040 committee we only have seven positions to fill uh so I just wanted to make sure I keep rotating everybody um a little crazy about it so I have a spreadsheet I look through it we all colors too all colors I appreciate you being able to keep track yeah so I just want to you know um I'm also taking an account for those members of the board that serve on monco 20150 comprehensive plan committee so in formation of making these committees so with that the Monro 240 uh committee will be populated by douy OED Sandra and John Ernst and the mon Montgomery Awards

committee will be uh populated by myself Bob and Jonathan so and uh the monco 2040 committee will probably start to get information in the next month two months yeah um mon to two months and meet with meetings being scheduled to review uh the um applications for grant money and the MCO m Awards committee will start to hear towards the end of the spring and we're scheduling of a um of a tour of the nominees sometime in the summer is usually when it's done with the Montgomery Awards in in November uh Steve yeah I have just as a followup to that I just want to at least go on record uh by indicating that since I'm onon the 240 committee there's a chance that my municipality will be submitting an application for Grant and I would certainly recuse myself from that voting process and that evaluation process so put that out publicly okay with that uh we call on our next order of business is the community planning assistance contracts and we'll call on Eric to give us an update on where we are with four municipalities good morning happy 2025 uh we have four contracts up for um approval today rockboro Marboro Township L Frederick Township and upper when in Township and you have a copy of the resolution in front of you and so you want me to go through the kind of the work we're doing for those you want to read the resolution first I no let's go through the let's go through the work doing the planners for each community and then I'll go through the

then I'll do the uh the resolution sure the these are all renewals so they were all contract existing contracts coming into this year rockage burough uh John michos is the planner this is a flexible assistance contract we've been doing a lot of Park planning and Improvement planning for them um we'll be looking to do some zoning and subdivision ordinance updates uh and possibly looking at Huntington Pike as a quarter study marbor Township is is one of our adjuncts uh John leer works from marbor his environmental background is very helpful in working with the marbor township we're going to be doing some selective ordinance updates for them with the subdivision ordinance uh and possibly a more comprehensive zoning code update and we also help them out with grant writing assistance uh Laura Frederick is also John michos uh and we'll be doing some Ziggler Village planning as well as some trail and connectivity planning for them um Township wide and then Upper gwy Township another flexible assistance um that's Margot petrusa the planner for upper gwined uh we're going to be doing a master plan for their Castle Park playground uh that'll be a major collaboration obviously with our design uh Team uh and we'll be doing some Grant running system for them as well and selective ordinance updates as they request sorry Margot before we get into any questions or comments Scott um before us we have uh mcpc resolution 25- 1.1 Community planning assistance contract resolution of January 8 2025 there are four contracts on this resolution all of them have the same same length of contract which is January 1st 2025 to December 31st 2027 first one is contract 675 of Township total cost of $7 75,200 to the municipality 50% to the

county contract 683 is Rock burrow uh total cost is $623 begins 5050 between Municipal in County contract 685 lower Frederick's Township uh total value is 7 $92 again split 5050 um contract 687 marbar Township uh total cost is $59,750 again split 5050 uh between municipality and county do I have a motion to approve the resoltion we move to have second are there any comments or questions for Eric uh board members that are in the room any comments or questions from board members from Nicole or Bob online not for me okay seeing none there is there any public comment on the on this resolution online anything Karina see n all those in favor to approve the resolution I I any opposed thanks s just took a couple quick notes on the bigger picture so we have only two more contracts to approve and all of the renewals will be completed for 2025 uh you'll be seeing those the February meeting uh and then for the recovery ratio we'll be looking at all the numbers for 2024 uh in the next few weeks when all the time sheets get in and I'll have an updated number on that and be able to start looking at that for uh for this year and seeing how the the increases have affected our we can see if we're gonna have a board board retreat to like Six Flags or something Eric do you keep um like a spreadsheet I'm always thinking of a chart of sometime seeing the years that these commun have been um in contract with us so I I remember at one point upper gwed was not correct yeah this is just their second renewal okay so

sometimes that's just an interesting thing to have not that it is so impactful I mean it is impactful for your work because it shows kind of the um the lineage of the relationship but I think it's interesting you know because sometimes they're in sometimes I know War sister's been in war sister been asked tell menson has has t menson ever been here not not since I've been here okay so it's just and then we can see the responses of the communities that have longstanding relationships and those that may not have relationships or those that may have checkered and how they respond to policy and to Grant applications it is interesting I think because I know that town menson was not as active in some of the projects that we have had whether they be grant grant um you know uh programs and how it shows how the impact of this consistent work really does change that profile some of these communities well we just we add to the staff essentially and that's kind of always been our goal is to be an extension of their staff so we can offer the grant writing assistance obviously when we're working on planning projects either comp plans or quarter studies or master plan were teeing up all the time looking for funding and projects and implementation so how you having that continuity it really isn't I'm sure John can can uh underline this managers are so busy so that they take they they often look at what's on the wind screen and they have to get it done but sometimes applying for grants for projects that may not be up here that may be you know critical but not urgent never get on on their plate to to do and and that's the kind of thing that we can help with yeah and that's something that maybe as managers have gotten busier and everybody's gotten busier it seems over

the last 10 years or so our grant writing assistance as an offering has been expanding because people are are continuing to take more advantage of that and you also have a pleora of understanding of all the different grants that are out there because you've had experience your staff has experience and if not you know our our colleagues help newer Grant um newer uh contracted you know uh f from our our office to to really work with these communities except the resources are really so multiplied by utilizing I would I would offer two things to that yes uh the ability to reach out to the County Planning Commission and say you know what we in the back of our minds have had this project that's been kind of at least we talk about it one day we're going to take a look at this to be able to reach out to Eric or to and say hey look we've got this project can you guys take a look at this and kind of come up with a couple of Concepts they did that with our our railroad Plaza project that is still kind of simmering you know until something becomes available but it really does it not only helps us think about ideas in the background but it helps the elected officials know that there's something going on in the background because they might bring a project to your attention and say hey we should take a look at this yeah I got it I got it on they're working on this for us and we can show that the other thing I would also say is that for me what's encouraging is that we know that even though telmon is not a contracted Community they have received grant money through the process so I think that there's a there's a there's a piece of that that says hey you don't have to be a contracted Community to be able to take advantage of the grant money for your community and I think and I think that goes along long way as well that you know this money is for everybody and it's not just for those communities who have a contract that I think

is any other comments for this agenda item I the contracts three years are our rates locked in for those three years or so we approve the the rate structure uh there's an escalation in year one to two two to three and currently that's at 3% thanks next on our agenda is uh perum and Valley School District enrollment project and a call on and I warned you this was coming last y per Valley School District is is interested in a school district enrollment study they're a returned customer um they are returned customer yes I believe this will be their third enrollment study uh set to kick off on February 15th of this year and will be wrapped up by beginning of June um the contract is for a total amount of I'll take that resolu um well in that case I don't really have that many more details to share um they have some upcoming um facility decisions that they are trying to make and are looking for some additional data to to help them with those decisions um and I'm looking forward to getting started on working with the school district again before we take any questions let me get the resolution so we have mcpc resolution 25- 1.2 shortterm contct resolution of January 8 2025 it includes contract 686 per Valley School District as s said the length of contract is January 1st 2025 to April 15 2025 total cost is $1

13,770 that is split 75% to the school district 25% to the county I have a motion to approve the resolution we move to have a second we move the second or any comments or questions for and from board members any comments questions from the public or staff seeing none all those in favor I any thanks appreciate it you got any more coming up you think Yes actually I um the the superintendent of the perum and Valley School District is also the superintendent of record for the north monco technical career center this would be a little bit of a a switch up for me they're interested in learning more about enrollment trends at the Technical High School very very interesting so I'm trying to figure out how to best F out what the trends there are it's not really driven by housing construction it's more so driven by students professional interest so uh so that's a possibility and the wihen school district would be a potential for this fall um to take advantage of the the next school Year's enrollment numbers but that's a a contract I'm working on drawing up to and potential earning capacity without having to do neology uh for the technical school yes that's that would be part of the analysis they're interested in the career prospects of their current um with our manufacturing uh especially our manufacturing interest in Montgomery County it's a very it's it's a national interest of kids moving from only not only but um changing their interest levels in college versus fotch

so uh with our high you know um the number of high quality jobs in manufacturing monery County it would be great to have more um Workforce well skilled from our own communities I agree find a place to live it would be even better thank you that's the as that's techical school okay next up is our ongoing um update on the monco 2050 uh comprehensive plan advisory committee and this week we are going to explore Transportation I have I Chloe and Matt Matt who started do a little dance all four of us together I don't know I was GNA down we don't need I everyone happy 2025 nice to see all of you um this is the third topic Focus presentation and discussion we've had with you so um you know about going through these topics with the advisory committee we want to make sure that the board is included in the conversation the discussion about these issues um we had a transportation Focus board advisory committee meeting in early December and we're now bringing to you some highlights from that conversation and some next steps um kind of aspirational vision statements and thinking about how we get to what the plan's going to really say about this so um as you know transportation is so uh integrally connected to all of these other topics that we discuss we can see clearly economic development is not

possible without transportation infrastructure and um all these both impact each other Transportation patterns and transportation needs impact housing open space development patterns and vice versa so um we also wanted to just point this out that there's updated population projections from dbpc which I think Scott mentioned at the last meeting um the prediction is that Montgomery County by 2050 will have over 100,000 additional residents more than are here right now that's a lot of people um we have on our map Hub a couple of maps about this thanks John Sinker uh but this one is a screenshot of one that shows the percentage increase by municipality so just in thinking about transportation we can't forget that um there's going to be more people than there are now and they're going to also be living here it may not be exactly 10 18,7 186 people but population is continuing to grow and these are just a couple of some of the municipalities that are growing the least and growing the most and um just as an intro to the the whole transportation system something to keep in mind and I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Matt Edmond who's gon to take you through some of the highlights of our transportation Chloe you go back to that slide that let's go back to the map if you haven't been visiting our maphub there's a million amazing maps on there and you should go see it you can find it at uh let's the easiest way I think is to go to monom County the.gov m2050 and then from there there's a link it's all about links now guys as I

said as I said when I was reviewing the work plan all about links we all now that we finally you know most some of us not all us finally got into 21st century now that we can use these tools you have to give them to us because now we're hungry to use them there's I'll just point out there's another map that shows the numerical increase like the number of people and then and the colors look very different so go look it's interesting stuff the percentages are so the high percentages are in the western part of the county which we've kind of had that impression just based on what things we've discussed over the last year or so and what's happening in those in those West don't of K and Bridgeport too to the in terms of percentage increases yeah but yeah you're not wrong about the western part of yeah you know where where there's the most land is where you're gonna have the most growth just it's just unavoidable but also there percentages so percentages are not the same as absolute numbers and absolute numbers could tell you a slightly different story as well but we want to put that up there just to at least have a illustration right of you know how many people are going to be projected to be coming into Montgomery County and living here and it's going to have an impact on what we think will be our land use panics so uh I'd like to shift a little bit to transportation and give a streamlined version of the Powerpoints and the presentation that we gave to the advisory committee a month ago so some of the things uh that maybe Steve uh Steve just strikes me is I know you were there I remember you very clearly um so you've you've seen parts of this but there's some of that that's been pulled out for everyone else it might be a little bit new but we wanted to kind of like I said streamline it and move through it and just talk a little bit about transportation and the idea of Transportation uh and then we wanted to segue into a a brief discussion with you as a board on some of the outcomes uh from this uh topic here in Mona 20150

one thing I would say is don't you and Matt should not lose the opportunity shots we're taking the high road a month sometimes what they say sometimes revenge is best served cold Tru truth is truth is in our fantasy football league that we've had for 30 years I beat John in the finals so enough said just add a little something you know yeah don't don't need to make it professional we can just make it personal good thing all right so uh one of the most important things uh that you need to know about Transportation Montgomery County is just how extensive our network is it's easy to forget but you compare us to especially the other three Suburban counties and we have a lot more infrastructure than any of them so just to illustrate we have you know a lot of Highways four interstates one US Route as a highway right we have other us routes that aren't highways but in terms of Highways freeways limited access we got four interstates which is unheard of one US Route One State Route which is you know a big chunk of 30 or9 going through part of the county and so you can see this web of uh red lines of Highways highways are the lifeblood of our economy whether we like it or not and that's why we have some of the big places that we have in mon County but we're also blessed with ample Transit um we have two systems everyone forgets that potown has their own system of seven bus routes so they're out there in red and sep is in blue U Bus Revolution is going to scramble this up a little bit but it doesn't change the fact that you have all of these things you have all of these Regional Rail lines six of them you have the nstown High Speed Line which is absolutely unique in our region um you have the inner city rail line the Keystone service actually stops in Montgomery County and armore 52 stations between all the regional rail and High Speed Line 50 bus routes power Transit which we can't even map um so there is a lot of transit in our County if we think there isn't much this map should show us otherwise and bicycling and trails one of the things that we hear from Bill

Hartman is that uh you know Trails as transportation is a somewhat nebulous and changing thing um but we want to put it on here because it is part of our transportation Network at some level and we've always been a leader uh among the region in building circuit Trails you can see those uh in in Orange you can also see the the bike Lanes in green that's a a fledgely network but it is there and it is growing and we do have a lot of them too so that Network all those things that we just saw on the maps they shape monry County you know this was the map back in 1871 and transportation shaped to Montgomery County then by doing probably two things one was splitting off some of our big townships if you ever wondered why there's a southford an upper sford and a lower sford it's because like East and West nardon at some point they said you know we're too big and too much money's going over there and so you know we need to split because people are moving here and things are growing and the rail Line's really good there so you can see narst toown and Kashi and a little little tiny pots down there in the corner and they're all basically spread out along for the most part Rail lines they also show up in different places as Villages at Crossroads so that's what we had we had horse and buggy we had train and that's what created our early land use patterns green is that the map you gave Jonathan this map we made ourselves and this is from mon 240 and it's our it's our land use updated for a couple years ago and all the yellow which we often times have called suburban sprawl like that was created because we have these highways because we have the roadways and we have cars which allow people to to travel longer distances and shorter periods of time so we still have uh our old towns and our old areas around train stations but now the highways added another layer of growth and helped shape Montgomery County further and so you know this is just a reminder that Transportation creates land use whether we like it or not and it takes a lot of forms you know our employment centers a lot of them popped up because the turnpike was there so they were created by

highways towns such as amler they were created because of the train stations the train was the way you got around and those are Legacy Burrows Legacy places our residential communities not always but often and more increasingly are locating themselves around Trails when they can or vice versa they're in there and they're hoping the trail comes through uh and then lastly this we we we forget this all the time but every every intersection of two major roads in our County pick one out here on our screen we talk about German Town Pike in 363 that's Fairview Village and Fairview Village was created there's no train line there it was created by two major roads intersecting and it was a big Village if you ever look into the history and over time it redeveloped and so you know as the car became king uh you know a couple buildings got knocked in he got a strip center there but the strip centers and the gas stations and the banks and all those things they locate at intersections because that's where the people are and transportation is about people people that's the point so you have to remember you know that we we love to talk about modes we all have our favorite modes I love to drive I like to take the train every doing X or Y or Z the reality is at the end of the day all this is about people people are using transportation to live their lives these are stock photos but I picked them up because they are good examples of people actually doing things because of Transportation you have a couple going to the grocery store which let's be honest for whatever reason they probably wouldn't be walking a mile or two to the grocery store and carrying back eight bags right so they use their car to be able to go grocery shopping to buy the groceries and then you have people in the middle there who are probably walking between their train and their office building maybe in Center City for instance uh and you have people on the right you know who are getting out and they're using our trails and they're getting healthy and uh and seeing the world so you know transportation is really it's a means to an end and we all use it guys every time you walk out your front door you are interacting with the transportation system even these lovely young women they are going down the steps of their house and they are walking to either their driveway where

the car is or the sidewalk in front of their house to go walk someone so literally to get here you had to use Transportation as soon as you left your house you're interacting with the system so you shape the system and the system shapes you and that's the land use Transportation connection it is not simple by any means but it is a symbiotic relationship that gives us the world that we have around us so what does Mak 2040 say about Transportation um we're going to kind of cut to the chase on this and we're going to say all the different um recommendations and goals that are in that document they all kind of get summarized into preserving and growing the transportation system they cover all sorts of modes they cover topics high and low but at the end of the day when you put them together and you look at you say this is the theme it's to preserve our system not to let it shrink but also then to grow it where we can get more service more bus lines uh you know better roadways whatever it is the the plan does not take a a a a preference approach towards any one mode it basically says all of it is good so how does the county influence Transportation so that's the question you know what if if we have a comprehensive plan and it says the county should consider doing XYZ well it assumes that the county has tools to do XYZ so these are what the tools are we have two departments that deal with this subject one of course is us the Planning Commission and we do some interesting things I mean we we manage roadway capital projects they'll see after this meeting you'll get your Ridge Pike image um we program our roads and bridges in the tip which is something that we've talked about between staff and board for years um we have our complete streets evaluation every year because we have that policy um and we urge good Transportation through the soft power that we have with our communities and then on the roads and bridges side they manage the bridge Capital project so really Us in roads and bridges together we get some stuff done and so we have some some hard power sweat but they really focus on the roads and and maintaining things so together that's where the county has the ability to shape what it does through its

policies Matt yes what do you mean by manage the roadway capital projects you're the project manager for new roadways is that what I'm understanding not so much new but any any any any any Capital Improvement to one of the 75 miles of road so Ridge Pike is a good example you know this was something that roads and bridges started with 25 years ago and over time for reasons I won't go into it landed in our lap and so we run that project almost as if we were roads and bridges ourselves it's really interesting we Matt myself Loren um we are essentially like pend do project managers you know it's really hard for people to understand I was thinking about this when I had asked that um Ridge P question that the county is responsible for these roads and we can't I can't quite how they got that way maybe it's historical but that's a lot of you know infrastructure that we have to manage so it's a big one you think it's not by how big they are to people's Vision they're just historically our responsibility right and and part of that is maintenance and roads and bridges does the maintenance they'll repay the roads yeah so I get that I guess the further confusion is that for me the Planning Commission is managing road projects where we have a Road and Bridge Department who is not managing the road projects yeah it is weird no doubt about no doubt about it but but here's the here's the thing Jonathan right so every C every one of the counties has this issue at some level somewhere where you want to get projects into the tip but roads and bridges is not the ones that get into the tip it's planning commissions that sit on those things do because that's a planning function right right right right it just so happens though that we we we live in some of the same spaces roads and bridges does so you know it's taken it's it's taken time over the years to to get

good at it and to know it it's our skill set we've developed a skill set so I think it comes to us because we have not not a knock on knock roads and bridges at all but right they're not planers so there are times during that process where I think we benefit from having our people at the front of that project and well it's an interesting situation um do we have more do we have more uh County um uh highways than our sistering counties yes there's only a handful of counties in Pennsylvania that own roads Philly is the biggest because local roads are Philly County and City more um I believe alagan is has the second most and they have quite a bit and then we are the third and I think West Morland might be the fourth but it drops off a lot after us so I have a question along Jonathan's lines Ro projects at what is the Planning Commission managing all the way through construction or are you managing up to the point where construction start yeah we manag it all the way through although roads and bridges is with us every step of the way their Consulting Engineers that provide you know their their daily Road Bridge Services Engineering Services they come to every meeting we make sure they're part of it um in some cases they review the plans on behalf of the county in certain instances so it's not like it's just us and roads and bridges isn't paying attention I mean they are they are with us it's just we have that that that oversight at the end of the day to make sure it gets done so you're maintain you're you're managing the schedule you're managing the details of the project managing the potential [Music] do the budget to in a lot of instances yes working with the engineers honestly that's why we look to hire Len uh when Crystal retired a few years ago we went after somebody that had a similar amount of engineering background and project management experience and Mar fits that bill very well probably spends over 50%

of her day-to-day time working on at this point the four different Ridge Pike projects um some of them are in planning some of them in construction and she's handling um a lot of different items across each of them is there a construction manager that yeah yeah yeah we we always hire consultant construction managers construction inspection folks but you know we we're also are the ones that go between pendot you know because a number of projects like Bridge Pike they have federal and state funds on it and that's where the link started and so we are we are we we have sometimes we have more knowledge than roads and bridges about pen Do's processes and their their formats but like the big takeaway is this by us having control of of these roadway Improvement projects We Are One Step Closer almost I wouldn't even say closer maybe maybe tight to make sure that good planning principles get designed into these roads otherwise you'd have to ask roads and bridges and hope that they see the value in good planning principles and put them in there and just to make sure I'm not criticizing that mat it's just a different function for in my mind for planning commiss yes it is and it goes back to Lafayette Street goes back to the lafette street project when the commissioner said well Leo you got the project you manage it and then we took on you know we did that and we took on Rich Pike around you know 2013 2012 2013 2014 and so we've been managing both of those La at Street's done now for several years but Ridge Pike is the Legacy and it's still going what happens when you do a good job thank you for saying that I didn't want to say that but thank you recall that our planning commission's budget includes these road projects so it looks like a Planning Commission has a huge budget but a lot of that is a capital project that has nothing to do with has little to do with the plan the typical planning functions that the

commission yeah that's a good point our capital budget listed as Planning Commission is like $240 million and 160 million of is Rich Pike construction so um if if that's okay if I can keep going sorry no that's okay lineal sequential keep going it's a great question Jonathan I'm glad you asked it so we we coordinate with all sorts of outside agencies I mean I I always say that we are the Hub and in the Hub in spok system a lot of things and people go through us and then go back out U so we have a lot of sway again that soft power of of having worked with other agencies and build relationships with their people and this is the the the map of the roads and bridges just to kind of back around to what you were asking about Jonathan it's a little bit hard to see but the roads are red lines you know here's parts of suntown Pike for instance the green are the bridges um and the county actually puts a lot of money towards these um we're we're proud to say that we have County Commissioners that understand the value of investing in the infrastructure that they own um and we get it we're involved in this stuff in a lot of different ways even when roads and bridges is running it they still include us in some of the discussions and of course we have a complete streets policy which is you know the thing that we use to say for instance on Ridge Pike we're going to put a sidewalk on the south side the entire way and maybe on the North side if we can fit it into it's it's this document that we created that helps guide what we do and it's an adjunct to our plan so this is the best part of the presentation these are the emerging trends that we see popping up here over the course of the next comprehensive Plan and there's five one is remote work you know the other and I'll get in I won't read the red part but one is remote work the other is online Commerce third is electric vehicles which may not have as much of an impact as we think it is a pretty cool topic uh autonomous vehicles which is another very cool topic and then system maturity and this is our that's our our big planning idea so remote work um you know return to

work levels going back to I think mid November uh even as as as late as that Philadelphia was down at the bottom return to work which means that even in our suburbs in our communities in M County there's still a lot of people who are working from home and that has not re down may not you kind of see in the numbers from the uh the ACs the American Community survey um you can see where over the last 10 years um the number of people driving suddenly took a huge drop in 2023 um so did the number of people taking Transit which is why SEPTA has budgetary issues um but then you can see that work from home no one cared about that 10 years ago now they do and we have the numbers to prove that roughly 20% in our County according to census is working from home at least some number of days a week and for sea you know it it means that they're only back to 75% of where they were pre pandemic and and that really is why they have an operating budget issue oftentimes they in the past they talked about a capital budget problem but now they have an operating budget problem that's because fewer people are using it so they have a huge hole it's not that they mismanaged anything it's that people stopped taking the system in large enough numbers that it created a budget Gap second one is online Commerce and so digital retail sales have taken off I think we all kind of know that um brick and mor has leveled which is better than declining um but the e-commerce has gone up quite a bit since the start of the pandemic we all know it I'm sure you guys all have Amazon on your phones as an app you get this one um warehouse distribution is interesting dvrpc they have a whole Freight Goods movement group there and so they track this stuff quite intimately and so they have been able to figure out where all the um uh warehouses have gone and a lot of them guys have gone along the I95 and 295 Carter uh in Philadelphia in New Jersey but what's interesting though is that Montgomery County has quite a number of them and a lot of them are clustered in this area where all of our highways meets no surprise you're going to move things by truck you got to have good access to the highways um but you know

they're scattered of about in other places too they're up along um the Northeast Extension they're out a little bit along 422 on County Line Road I wouldn't say there's no Rhyme or Reason but it certainly is much more varied than traditionally uh industrial and Warehouse sighting used to be and of course it puts more trucks on our roads um you know we see the growth we have the numbers comes from us do and they're projecting up higher and higher it's it's one of the big things in Freight that that's movement is you know more stuff in our ports more stuff on our train lines you know norol Southern CSX and then more things on our roads too it's not to say the roads are the only thing that's important but it's all big Network Trend three electric vehicles EV usage is quite up the last few years the um inflation reduction Act help to supercharge uh federal government subsidies for electric vehicle purchases and development uh so people have been taking advantage of it and we find EV usage to be basically in you know the heart of Montgomery County it tends the track where people have money so wherever the affluence is tends to be where you'll see more electric vehicles which makes sense because they are expensive and more than the average gas powered vehicle Montgomery County is a leader though in uh EV ownership so you can kind of see how the number went up 2022 is the most recent data that we have on file that we could find um and you can see how the numbers have really grown right around the time of the inflation reduction act 2122 and uh we have grown to and we have more EV registrations in our County than any other county P and of course the locations are everywhere now and they are an issue so this is a picture I that we took recently from the Plymouth Meeting Mall U they have installed their own fast Chargers uh outside Boscovs and you can see here you know there's there's probably more than you think but fewer than we need and they're clustered there on that map just gives you a sense of the distribution U but you know there's there's issues about how you how

you retrofit you know what do you do on a city street this is this is a uh it's an AI image from New York City but you know a place like New York or Center City Philadelphia North Philly you know people don't have driveways they don't have garages how do they how do they charge that's a big issue that our staff have been working on and this is actually from a property on Germantown Pike in East tin I was passing one day and saw a car just plugged into the outlet outside these people will do whatever they need to charge their car Trend four is automated vehicles um and we're finding that travel times have been going down for the most part over time um but people have been traveling a little farther over time but the Sens is kind of not sense the co kind of scrambles that up a little bit but that's where the trends historically have been Comm time going down mileage going up but you know a many vehicles are a huge huge question mark right commuting could be fun this this futuristic image could be any one of us someday where hey I'll drive an hour to work because I don't have to pay attention I can do work I can surf the Internet I can scroll um or you know things just like pop up into screens like a sci-fi movie either way automated Vehicles could kind of change how we get around maybe maybe not it's a huge if so what do you what do you if that should come to pass less train it perhaps my theory this is just me there's a lot of theories out there my theory is that it might change the city a little bit uh because you know people can sort of car share so to speak or just Uber can just send Vehicles all around without a driver and they'll just keep being more efficient and that would hurt Transit out here I don't know I I I my guess is that not much will change people like to have cars and if if the opportunity is well I don't own a car and just have an O come pick me up versus hey I still own my my my Shelby Cobra but now it drives me around my guess is a lot of people in Montgomery County would not mind owning

a car and having to drive them around and not have to wait for Uber to show up it might have land use impacts it might have land use impacts maybe maybe not it's just these are things that we're going to have to work through as staff and figure how we big this in think faster Canute because there's less congestion because these cars are going the proper speed and nobody's doing maybe 10 years ago that was the thought when the idea was that you put sensors in the road and that would keep all the cars in a perfect spacing um I don't know if if if technology can give us that Utopia um cars and people are messy things and I don't know it's hard to tell but that was the thought at one point what about that we're talking about all this Commerce moving around because of people's onl shopping what about the impact on trucking because number one if they were driven by you know AI would they be safer would we be able to move more stuff I mean that's I'm not asking you they answered that I mean that's the question sure yeah there is a there is a a theory that you know if you use Ai and Technology you can if not reduce maybe eliminate crashes all together because the cars will know I don't see I don't I don't see the the use of vehicles being anything with is not going to take hold until there's large massive changes substantive changes to the to the roadway infrastructure I think there's too many variables in roadways and change of roadways from the city out to you know western part of the county further out to make it useful enough to subst change the way people move through our through our communities I I

just I just the variables are are the thing that is the most Troublesome where they are in San Francisco yeah I mean I still go back to has anybody else in this room ridden in an autonomous vehicle besides me I have great so two of us um and I did it in Phoenix I mean they're they're mostly still testing in the warmer climates I hoping that the Carnegie melon investment in Pittsburgh was going to kind of let Pennsylvania be a little bit more of a leader on how to do things in rain in the snow as it stands right now I think the car companies are still trying to figure this out themselves you know GM just dropped their Phoenix you know the the car companies are still you know GM just dropped their Cruise efforts a couple of months ago I think everybody is still trying to shake out how the overall structure of this is going to work and you know I believe that the technology is going to get there especially within the range of our comprehensive plan out to 2050 so we have to talk about about it as part of this but how exactly things are going to play out what the federal policy is going to be um where people are going to feel comfortable with whether it is a individually owned vehicle or you know participating in some sort of ride shair and if the expectation is two or three people in every sort of autonomous C that looks very different for how many things are on the roadways ultimately in terms of public transit and things you still have the geometry problem things take up a certain amount of space even if they are moving much more efficiently on roadways they still have to get through space at a certain amount of time and it is just more efficient to use trains buses higher capacity Vehicles it's a huge question and we debate all the time internally about what that means for our built environment and for our mobility and it's something that a staff we're going to have to work through as we go through the comprehensive plan process that's

that's a with there's a huge difference between Phoenix Arizona and you know the Philadelphia areae United States thead system don't get me wrong guys I would love for us not to deal with this at all in the comp plan yeah but we felt like it should be at least something that we talk about in this PowerPoint well you have to think big one we're thinking about this yes I mean I think you're doing the right thing thank you John so the last trend is system maturing and this is an important one right this what this really means is it's a version of something that you may have heard from staff before that montgomer county is growing it certainly is but it's not the 60s or the 70s or the 80s where it's growing fast and there's still a lot of room to to build you know a lot of things have grown and so now our communities are maturing and so you know what that means for the types of Transportation projects we do uh is significant in in the 60s the 70s and the 80s most of this map here tip investment would have been roadways and highways you know widening things out to four or five Lanes um you know completing 422 like that's where we were a generation or two ago nowadays with our with our region and and and our County largely mature and maturing um the the things you need to do to make stuff work is smaller in scale and a little more tailored and so you know what this map is is is all the tip projects and some of those are things on the Skoal expressway right here um you know Route 100 is a big Road access 422 there's some stuff but by the by and large though it's not really a lot of widening it's it's improving intersections it's uh you know creating uh roadways that that don't connect that need to connect that they're missing something um you know it's it's widening turn lanes and intersection so that it flows better without widening the whole roadway on either side those are the kinds of things that uh our tip investment is is increasingly starting to look like um and that's that's

important to note as we go through this comprehensive plan process one of the questions is what do we program here on the map to say what we want to do in the next 25 years and most likely it's not going to be widen for 22 to8 Lanes it's going to be things that are probably a little bit more U modest and can get through dvpc screening process a little bit easier that because is that because wi being is well expensive cumbersome to obtain the land right away um I mean there's a need to Wi because traffic flows because they're only going to be able to I assume making assumption they're they're only going to be able to improve so much by improving the existing roadway configuration or you know merging abilities throughout roadways um but the real you know looking at the numbers that Chloe talked about the 12.7% increases into 2025 2050 excuse me I mean roadways are going to get more congested yeah unless you know there's other means that brought into so is that the reason why we're seeing more of that is because these authorities and even the county itself and and townships are not willing to go through the process of trying to widen roads because of the effect on timing cost yeah cost is a big part of it um you know when when when when a when a locality of some sort is growing take take your favorite Township of burrow right at that point in time when it was booming their Municipal budget was booming as well and so they were able to keep up with public improvements because more and more businesses and people were moving there and the tax base was going up when you when you start to hit a critical point though that doesn't keep growing but then your your needs start to shift and so that's why in the transportation world in the last maybe 20 years um we haven't seen the level of

investment and so there's been a move towards how can we spend our money smarter use its for instance tell Transportation Systems you know wi in the intersection not the roadway in between intersections there's We There are two strains of thought and planning one is that that uh if you widen a road from say two to four or five Lanes um you know you're basically wasting your money you'll never get anything out of it you don't need to widen it um and then there's others that say well sometimes maybe you do in certain cases and we tend to be more of the latter St is why the first one we were always told I remember you widen the road widen 422 it still is congested because what people are on yeah which is yeah which is the theory of induced Demand right right but if these but does that play out yeah it does and it doesn't it's it's I mean do we asked dvpc to look into this they ended up having a symposium and they had all sorts of academics that weighed in and and we kind of felt that maybe they had the they they had their conclusion in hand before they they did it I mean in some cases it can but it's nuanced what I would say is it's nuanced um it's not that it happens the same way in every place some places it happens a lot and you know LA because everyone has a car and there's really no other way to get around two of different piece there's the amount of people being moved and there's the amount of time that takes to go through there so the facility with more capacity will move more people but it might be doing it at the same amount of time and delay that you were having all right so let's take 422 you have X amount of lanes you add a second you add another Lane it's not all of a sudden that that you're people are in those areas that would use 422 are now all of a sudden going to go out by cars right maybe to some degree somebody will say okay I got an extra Lane maybe it'll take me less time than doing something else eventually move to limmerick and buy a house and more and more people doing that eventually it starts coming

in we were trying to get them to study you know at added the third L on 202 in Chester County for a good SWA of the um area but that's happening anyhow right I mean you saw I mean I know it's not I know it's not people but you saw the growth in the western part of the county based on the projections is you know double digits compared to other areas so that's happening regardless that is the land use Transportation growth interplay of which everybody's got a kind of balance and since Transportation infrastructure improvements take so long to do you have to be thinking about them as far in advance as you can so that people don't say I've been sitting in this Jam for six years what's going on do we see less T do we see less when when when projects experience wide or when roadways experience widening do we see less congestion on local roads well I mean it depends on the facility but generally speaking though yes when you when you widen a highway once you put the highway in you open an area to growth because now the thing exists you can undo that when you improve it you know a couple of things might happen it might be that more people keep moving out there and now there's more cars on for say 422 because there's just more growth out but uh yeah you know there there might be more people that say well I'm not taking Ridge Pike anymore because you know it's now faster to get back on 422 and they shift at least for a time but with with the with money going to the intersections which is take 10 years but there you can see them happening you can get through those those uh restricted areas faster everybody's using their GPS everybody's saying how fast is it to get one place the other when those intersections now moving more effectively efficiently people may make a choice rather than going on 422 which

is always congested their GPS says go through here it's two minutes longer but you can get through you know without all thejust people may be making different DEC I find myself making decisions Whoever thought I mean I in the past five years come to narst toown different ways I do because I look and I see which is the best way and whether do I feel like sitting in that kind of traffic or do I feel like moving and what's two minutes to me for me it doesn't make a difference so people change because of the technologies that allow us to make decisions all the way through our travel I go over Rich pipe because I like I like to get M at M right do you know that's what I want to know when it's all done you're going to smile absolutely that so one of the things about system maturity which which in a lot of ways is also a a redirection away from simply just saying all right the solution to most things is widening to more Nuance solion is safety has become a a a big buzz word and you know I I say it somewhat cynically that that planning especially transportation planning it it it finds something and it loves it to death for a couple of years and it moves on to something else and it was pre- pandemic we were talking about uh uh uh e-mobility you know scooters and and and uh what's like scooters was that hover boards hover not hoverboards they are but yeah a bike share Bike Share scooter share like that was the Hot Topic from 2016 to 2019 so safety is one that has been growing in importance now in planning and so we've been mapping that and we've been looking at it and uh incorporating it more into the ways that you select projects so you know system maturity is moving away from the old thinking of of of how we prioritize our investments and it's becoming much more balanced and much more nuanced that's what happens when C everywhere circles everywhere everywhere um I'm not going

to go through all these but I just want the board to wasn't at the advisory committee to know that we tried to make it interactive and interesting with our uh attendees and so we ran through a bunch of things on Mente mentee is an online ping platform uh because we wanted the advisory committee to get a sense of some of the the pushes and pulls that you have in the transportation world when you have planning decisions to make so uh you know the theme for that was Transportation goals can work against each other we put up this U really cool color wheel uh which shows nine of what could be maybe infinite uh goals for transportation project uh and they run the gamut you know Equity sustainability you know to access safety Mobility um but anyway we we we did this one thing what are your priorities we we said here's nine what what what do you prefer and we Define them for everyone we just put the terms on for the record I got 100% quiz yes and and Steve was the only one who was actually quizzed he just didn't know it so anyway you know the top three that people when they were forced to choose uh and prioritize and not not equivocate you know mobility and access and economic growth and revitalization were the top three this is mobility this is access economic growth revitalization bottom three was security which is admittedly a little nebulous Freight movement and sustainability so it's just interesting to see our varied group where they came across overall as a as a as an entity on which of those types of nine things they they found most important for us as staff to pursue we did other exercises I'm not going to go into them so this is where we want to have a little bit of a discussion Scott do we still have time where where are we on almost 20 minut a little L 15 left good perfect so uh as staff we sat down we came up with uh seven six six uh Transportation uh Vision Values that we wanted to start to have a conversation around with you as our board these are things that we felt sort of they they come from that color

wheel a little bit but you we didn't want to come up with nine one for each thing on the color wheel some of them you can put together and so we we try to to to to come up with the things that we thought were most important and most reflective of the needs of our County uh and that's what we wanteded to do we want to throw these out to you uh let you read them think about them and and just have an open discussion about your thoughts on them you know what do we keep what do we change what do we add and just so you know these are not recommendations so there's a difference between what I'll call goals and recommendations so you know um safety has a very goal like statement be a place for all forms of travel for all users it's very very broad now from safety you could have recommendations that say well you know we want to have zero deaths on monery County roadways by 2050 that's a recommendation so as we have that discussion let's make sure we don't confuse the two otherwise we're going to get into a huge rabbit hole and we may never get out of it and yeah it'll be ugly but those are the six uh do you guys want me to read them off or can you see them well not the biggest Kina these are online [Music] so so yeah so we said safety sustainability you know a place where non-motorized transportation flourishes that the the ebikes and the scooters um Mobility having high quality Transportation options available to everyone so everyone can get around reliability and congestion and an efficient movement of people in Goods uh Equity right realistic and reliable travel choices for people with disabilities those who can't afford a car children seniors um you know a very broad type of of look at at Transportation equity and then economic growth revitalization to use our investment in our transportation system to strengthen grow our communities Al that's been you how can we use that to strengthen a burrow somewhere but it can be a lot of things a lot of

places so anybody want to uh chime in on any one of these six so so what's the question asked what what's your what is your impression of the statement made under each of these six categories and do you think they are appropriate for vision of values that they're trying to CLA 4 2050 or should they is there something in them that you would see uh changed added subtracted yeah if if we were to have a page in monco 2050 that says Transportation goals here's our six things we're trying to achieve with our recommendations that's what we might put on that page today is it right is that what you guys these aren NE these aren't necessarily goals or you know these are more like Vision Values you know what the county should values I think should achieve should should strive to achieve then within each of these there'll be goals right exactly that will be a little bit more specific to am I correct is that yes so something like that yes we we struggle to come up with the right terminology for what all these things are but yes there would be action items that fall underneath these C right the county will modernize it Fleet and the county will do this and work with Partners do that but would be the organizing they're the values and every day for somebody all of they all of them seem reasonable to me and each and every day or every which one rate comes to the top depends on the what's happening in my life you know so you know equity comes up when I'm sitting in my house comfortable and I'm not caught in

traffic you know Mobility maybe come come after I you know had my hip replaced but it's just different it's very different so I think values are more important see I see it a little differently I I see these more as definitely not goals but values and I think each of these should be taken into consideration with regard to every Transportation project that the county is um yeah I think that's I think that would be the intention some to Greater degrees than others depending on the actual you know that's a really project I would say because they could be graded you know they each could have a different color or whatever and this one reaches you know touches this this and this the other one over here reaches this this and that I mean it's that's that's a very interesting way think about it and that's generally how when projects at the regional level are scored and graded by dvrpc there's I think additional factors even Beyond these and everything gets some sort of you know treatment from it qualifies at least a little bit on yes so I'll just I'll make a couple comments safety be a place for all forms of travel I'm not sure I completely I would want that to be a little bit more defined so in my mind that talk about safety per se yeah for all forms of travel you know you know what when when I copied this over from the document we were working with we may have omitted the word safe I think it was be a safe place yes can you tell me I'm right you're right okay good that makes it better sustain sustainability non-motorized Transportation I think we should be looking broader

than just non-motorized transportation to me that would be indicating you know what what in your mind what is non motor is it just bicycles is it you know skateboards or is it scooters is it electric vehicles you know what's I'm trying to understand it's it really really it's anything but cars that's really what we mean that yes but I think that electrical Vehicles that's kind non gas c i I would want the sustainability aspect of that I think should include H uh human driven modes of transportation but also non fossil fuel consuming consuming Vehicles also or minimal fossil fuel consuming Vehicles like hybrids and you know I think that's that would there thank you Mobility have high quality Transportation options available to everyone yeah I think [Music] that's I think that's ambitious given the systems that we have in place and the how about diverse that's the whole point of this this should be yeah I know but I think Mobility should instead of high quality I would rather see diverse and um more accessible or a wider a wider um access so just note that it also has overlap with Equity as you're trying to work through specific what you like to see and to an extent reliability like

the further you get out from the city from City of Philadelphia borders you know Transportation Network really does start to thin out eastern part of the county I would say has you know with the regional rail and and busers um definitely has you know but once you start to get past yes once you get once you start getting past the turnpike it really starts thin out and I think there's a if the growth of the of the of the county is projected to the ACT which we've discussed then the only other mode of transportation outside of the one we just without that's why I say when you talk about mobility and even Equity I think the expansion of I high density that's the word come in mind but high density transportation um uh options are something that I think should be discussed or thought about in this from a land side saying no no talking about like you know more modes of transportation that could carry more people than me just in my car Transit but more than Transit whatever it may be yeah options efficien else what else you guys think about these and there and that's right I mean there are things that will overlap at times you the go the goal is that have recommendations out of this and you can we're going to have recommendations that could go in one or another probably we got to stick them somewhere um that's for the future but uh yeah these are not

mutually exclusive nor are they all sort of just lumped into one and I guess the instruction of the last one which is Transportation Investments to strengthen for our community under economic growth and revitalization is intended to be in coordination with the County's desire for how land is to be used that land use map that we always go back to so we certainly don't want to move we want to respect the fact that there are areas in the county we want to see reserved and lower density we don't just want to use transportation to just start to fill in all of those areas I'm assuming that's implied yeah I mean it it takes two or three forms you know lafette Street Extension project is one example of that where you know we we we improved the road and extended it out and the goal is to connect to the highway system to get people in there for revitalization purposes but other other examples could be naron or potown for instance say uh you know the county needs to actively reinvest in uh you know pedestrian scale transportation in those communities because that's what they were built on and and that's a way if we could fix un just giving examp we could fix all the sidewalks in nstown then that would make walking easier right and and that would benefit those communities or it could be uh the the the turnpike Carter reinvestment project the the seven new and improved interchanges along I 276 that was envisioned in 2014 and that plan to help SP revitalization of our aging business Parts like all three of those types of things in our mind fit under that at least that's how we envisioned it when we were writing this up um and my last point I obviously anybody else chime in here but the equity part of it I think you should keep an eye on the fact that in the next you know 25 years I think you're G to I mean and you might have better thought about this but I got to think that you're going to see much

greater a greater amount of school contractions where school districts combin contract their facilities and what that's going to do is obviously it's going to put you know kids having to get from instead of them I don't know how many kids walk to school or something but you know I know in Abington you have elementary schools all over the place but as you get further out and you know school districts become more strained in their budgets they're going to look to contract those facilities so that they are not paying for nine elementary schools but they're paying for seven of them and how that affects the mobility or the movement of children to school and that's and why is that Ste question we have an aging population and enough kids or well I think it's a combination that's one okay I think the other one is just School budgets and being able to SC yeah yeah and being able to uh maintain like I said nine elementary schools as opposed to seven um I think there'll be a push to do that and well but there's a push state wide to contract school districts also you know there there's always been a discussion about in in in state to you to incentivize school districts to combine as opposed to having all the separate entities separate school districts you know that primarily stop at township borders I think we did see this in like half horam School District just they rebuilt one of the elementary schools and they made it much larger and closed other Elementary so you know it's like there a huge investment to rebuild a whole Elementary School it's it's nice but they decided instead of then moving on to redo the other one just build it bigger and close the other one sell it so it's like that

kind of thing per upper perk did it um 25 30 years ago Clos the small I mean I think those couple of Trends in school districts is going to see a change how students get to school and what that will do to the the equity portion of this the mobility of children any other feedback for editing committee I said editing by committee I think the first two need to be worked on Nicole Bob I'm good that's not too bad first gr little bit yeah what was that called I did Sak slide on to the end of this presentation this one because I know you're all choing all the things working on 2025 um next steps we are uh shifting to other work we'll talk more about this I guess in a couple of minutes we are um next month hopefully going to present to you on preservation and Recreation that is the theme of our upcoming advisory committee meeting uh and then slowly but we are moving toward figuring out how to organize this plan the hierarchy of things with the call the the goals Stu all of that um it is and you know continuing with our public Outreach presenting on some of these

topics to our commissioners so that we don't uh leave them out of this discussion cycle and drafting the plan that's a lot of work as well um but I will talk more about that during our work program presentation um that's it thank you great thank you when's When's the next topic that's in February right when oh so preservation and Recreation topic we'll present that to you the board in February and then in March presumably we'll do people places and jobs The Advisory commit is addressing that in January the board presentations lag you know a month or so behind the advisory committee okay got it thank you um all right the rare opportunity to gr Scott I don't think so uh I'll invite all people involved in this presentation if you want to come up here we got more seats um yeah real real final um yes so it's another January this is our new uh work program for 2025 um we shared a draft with you at the the December board meeting and then updated that about a week later digitally um and as stated before those were evolving in terms of you know the proof rating and formatting and just photo selection different things were happening all up until the wire of you

know was literally kind of last week is when I think we had the bulk of our uh editing what we call fully completed from from our standpoint uh there so this what you have now on your in in hard copy um everyone but Bob and we'll get one out to you um is the version one no longer says draft however I think we will end up having a version 1.1 any comments from today will that need to be integrated uh we got some good uh Eagle Eye views from from douy and any others uh and we'll get those Incorporated right away so there will be a version 1.1 um that we'll share after this uh but this represents content-wise very almost identical to what you did receive uh the last Junction and I'll point out any exception but mostly U more proofing in typographical Corrections okay so all that out of the way um we are excited this has been uh the last three or four years we've been under this new format which was in instigated to provide uh a more Dynamic way of looking at our work program more tied to the issues more exciting way of considering it and also be fruitful towards our ability to self self-examine and look at our needs and keep uh keep the work flowing in a productive manner um and it's it's my my perception is it has served us well so there aren't major substantive changes but uh you will uh give a few more go to the next slot I uh so we start with the organizational structure not a lot of change here although one significant thing I'll point out from the last year um we had our GIS section is now uh definitively within the design sections umbrella um previously they reported directly to me

now they report directly to Patty although I'm still involved but it made sense to to integrate that in a more formal um planning section uh structure but other than that it's this exemplifies uh the divisions within the department uh but as we say frequently U many projects cross cross our divisions and involve multiple uh talents and expertise across section so Community planning environmental planning County Planning trails and open space uh design and transportation as you've been getting to know those in even more uh detail o o over the last year and going forward as we occasionally have have uh updates of those sections um this kind of reflects that so the work program structure um again I think I covered the purpose up front uh we're going to go through the focus topics and how the the projects oriented around there some are new projects uh some are continuing uh we have the same focused topics that we've had last year uh still putting in I'll put a note that we're coming to the cusp with the new comp plan uh and this will all take place about a year from now where we're dealing with a new comp plan with new new organizational structure to that plan new themes and that will be an opportunity to integrate the work program uh very closely or align it with the structure of the comp plan something that we kind of had to backtrack and figure out and didn't do exactly on this the last three years because the comp plan was created quite a while ago but uh that's something I'm looking forward to an opportunity to to kind of revamp and reset uh the comprehensive plan was given its own chapter that's probably the biggest change from this year to last year um and that was I think Justified certainly by the amount of work going into it the significance of it to our agency and to the county as a whole and just all the activities happening so it no longer made sense to just keep it as one of a few items in signature programs but to give it its

own identity and and flush that out a little more within the document and then signature programs is still exists and covers many of the previous things including our grant program uh a couple of other uh programs associated with boards such as open space and farmland preservation and our planning education program one of the new ones though is uh which has been active for actually for a little while is the America 250 PA effort uh 2026 as you know it's the 250th anniversary uh it means a lot to this region and to our County the recovery office in the Count's quarterbacking the County's efforts along with partners and we're part of that uh uh group uh Consulting in as we're learning now you know there's significant Transportation issues helping you know identify how we're going to take advantage of what events we're programming so it will involve time and effort from our our department as we coordinate with the the County's uh leadership on that then uh we'll cover and we'll cover this in more detail core core functions uh takes on and it crosses overall sections all the things we do almost on a day-to-day basis that shouldn't be overlooked or forgotten some of is very important and then finally we'll end with the community planning assistance program which you know well about but it's an opportunity to look at in the document especially to look at each Community what are the achievements and leading initiatives for the coming year are outlined there uh and then finally again uh on structure we have uh the same kind of setup as far as projects are described the name and description and important to identify which section is the lead on it sometimes it's it's more than one section uh and sometimes other sections play a more a lesser role or contributing uh role and that's noted as well and then the time frame this is important concept that we say each year hasn't changed but we we look at things in terms of short medium and long a short-term project is really intended to be completed within the next year Within

2025 medium would take one to two years so it ideally would be completed by the end of 2026 and then longterm applies to anything that will take three years or longer or in some cases may have an indefinite um uh end point or an ongoing circumstance but those are all noted in the tables within each section as you've seen and I think is a real important to to how we look at this so we'll start with the focus topics and here we're going to have our our gallery of uh presenters uh going through each one and talk about we we limited it to three achievements from the last year and three initiatives uh certainly as you've seen in the in the document there are many other projects uh worth worth noting um but we felt this is opportunity to just really focus quickly on on a few of them and bring them to your attention uh they weren't follow so we'll begin with Patty who is our only I think remote presenter if she's able to queue in she'll talk about placement uh yeah thanks Scott um just making sure you can hear me yes okay great thank you um yeah happy 2025 um I'm going to talk about placemaking and as you might recall placemaking is our work um with a lot of our partners to help uh create uh livable walkable vibrant spaces especially in the public real but also some of the work we're doing within the county and you'll see that in one of the projects for this new year next slide so the three ACH top achievements from 2024 um the first one you see there's the PT Washington Office Park landscape plan you may remember that was about a a several year project where we um did the landscaping for um along the route of the Cross County Trail that goes through the for Old Fort Washington Office Park that is actually trying to reimagine itself and it's becoming more of a work play Live space um but that we finished up in 2024 um the second one you see is Collegeville Main Street master plan we worked along with um our private consultant Durk and Edson to

help Collegeville um really kind of confirm and uh cement their vision for their Main Street and we were particularly involved in what that cross-section of the streetcape looked at some of the parking issues some of the circulation around town as part of that Vision plan and then the third one you see is the Penny Pack Park um in hpboro we were brought in on this project it's the old elementary school in Hatboro that um the burrow bought from the school district to uh have a a um burrow Park and we helped the committee um come to a compromise on how to best used this space it's mostly in the flood planes so there are environmental issues but it was also used by the local soccer league so again we helped them come to a compromise that um the committee recommended to council and that Council approved um at the end of the year so let's look at some of the things we have coming up so as you'll see in the work program we have a lot of great things um all of them exciting but I want to just highlight three in particular and so the first one is the AR Street prison Redevelopment um planning was brought in um basically the very end of last year beginning of this of 2024 as the project manager for this project um it originally had been slated for Demolition and the the new Commissioners have a new vision for this they real they ran on the idea of this preservation so we were um put in charge of this project to uh do several things primary goal is Preservation of as much of the pro of the prison property as we can so that is uh one of the the key goals but then also how do we develop redevelop this and the adjoining um lot that is a Surface parking lot into something that can be um a a vibrant asset to Norristown bring in an economic be an economic driver um and help create the even expand the county campus and make it a more livable walkable space so um we spent the year doing a exhaustive um um site conditions plan so that anybody trying to do this will know

what's happening there and um we had a very robust public engagement process over 600 people um came to our engage monco site but we also had an open house in October and then at the end of the year an RFI went out so again that is to an expression for requests for expression of interest and we're really um excited and um anticipating that we'll have a lot of De development Community looking at this and we hope to we are looking to have some of those um ideas being submitted by April next project so this project kesic Village streetscape we were approached by Abington Township to help with with um looking at the at Keswick um Avenue as you may know the Keswick Theater Keswick Village it does have a nice streetcape already that was done several I'm going to say probably a couple decades ago maybe 15 years ago or more um and it's just growing old so they wanted us to come in and give it kind of a refresh but as we had more conversations it looks like they also have a bigger Village area they want us to look at maybe connections to a park that's nearby possibly even connections to the Glenside train station to the West so again we will be working with them over this next year to really try to help understand what the community wants and what they the um Township wants to do there to make Keswick an even more vibrant space and then the third project P Pat John had a question Patty going back to the um the prison yes um what's the steps there uh uh after you get uh responses to the RFI yes so good question U Bob that was Bob right John I'm sorry that was no that was a good question so the next steps after that would be we have a committee that we're going to need to we're going to need to establish to look over all of the things that are submitted um and that will involve mostly people from the county but there might be a couple outside um interests maybe from the preservation Alliance and a couple

others but what we'll be doing is looking at what we think meets our goals um the best and what we like best about what they're submitting so again we don't know what people might want to do there or what developers think will work there we know what some people would like to see there but we don't we want the development Community to decide what can what they can make work what they can build and what will work there um so that committee will be looking at that we are because um it's not a price tag associated with this we are can NE negotiate with um maybe one or more of those um development um teams to see if we can flesh out what meets our goals even more or what they would bring to the table that would be even better um and then I think the goal is by the Fall to have chosen one of those development teams to go forward and then they we be working out um a public private partnership um with the county and anou or probably um you know to understand exactly who's responsible for each part of this project ultimately the county would would want to keep at least the prison property to always ensure that that is preserved in in the future um but there's the opportunity for maybe parts of it to be sold eventually back to the developer um parts of the property so again it's kind of a messy um it's not it's not a straightforward project kind of tricky but that's that would be the next steps so the selection really occurs after the review of the responses to this RFI yes okay great thank you sure um and now and the third project um and again the um the prism one was probably medium a couple years um certainly are involved in it and um the one from kesik a couple years this uh project is probably more of a short-term project um we were approached by Collegeville to look at their Community Park um and to come up come up with a new master plan for it and in those conversations we kind of asked about

what H was happening in NE Parks so we this past year 2024 we spent doing a little bit of an analysis what's happening in all their parks and again and also an analysis of the equipment at this park to see if it was safe and what what if it needed to be replaced and and um so this year we're going to be working on this master plan for this community park for Collegeville with they would like um to go for Grants even as early I think as this spring so this um is a a great project for one of our communities and again that's the reason we can do something like this is those Community contracts we have that Eric section um you know manages any questions questions for board members great thanks next up is environmental resiliency hello everybody Bo members environmental resiliency involves incorporating uh ideas for sustainability and resilience and also addressing the impacts of climate change pretty much everything we do last year we began implementation of the climate change vulnerability analysis by choosing two two neighborhoods one in Abington one in nstown and looking at the impacts of extended heat events and flooding from climate change and trying to identify some solutions or some projects that will help mitigate that in the spring we had an a workshop we invited all the Montgomery County eac's to attend and we promoted the resources on our website and on the conservation District's website that would help them in their work and then in the fall we were fortunate to uh host the we can serve PA fall Gathering it's a Statewide Gathering of uh EAC members we had that at Temple uh ambla campus had about 120 participants for a full day of seminars

and tours and lastly we began the bridge get it the bridge from plan preparation to plan implementation thank you for uh the whc and water quality improvement plan the plan itself is in internal review the revisions are almost done and it's an internal review before it goes to Municipal review but in the meantime we're forming a m Municipal Consortium for the implementation period this year we'll continue our work on the perky and mapping and flood study and the county storm water uh Plan update which are two separate projects but they're very similar they have different funding sources different timelines and a little bit of different content but for the most part we're identifying significant flood areas Gathering data determine why they flood what we can do about it proposing some solutions developing them to aille that's right at the um uh yeah it's just above schwanksville look doesn't look too bad you get over the bridge the problem yeah that's that's not one of the problem consy headquarters is to the lower left yeah and yeah and I believe that that driveway went to a oh oh that we no I see it's coming across to 29 where did the driveway go the the driveway that's there went to a property that was removed under a flood mitigation project some of them have been lifted and now some of them gone right right um so we'll be identifying in the perky alen Watershed we'll be identifying 20 top areas and in the rest of the county we'll be identifying the 60 priority areas and like say developing flood U sorry planning level solutions for that the one difference is the perom mapping and flood study budget has money in it for an implementation

project a demonstration project so we'll take one of those Solutions and follow it through to completion installation of whatever at a site to show that you know the plan is being effective uh we're continuing to collaborate with dbpc and Chester County uh some renewable energy climate change mitigation and greenhouse gas reduction projects Chester County we're working on a Regional building energy conservation toolkit the municipalities can use this to uh promote building energy conservation through their ordinances and realize some cost savings as well dvrpc we're working with them on several uh different tools for municipalities uh one to help them enact building energy benchmarking programs so they can track progress uh another is the solar power Guide online platform that will contain a solar model ordinance and an interactive mapping tool so they can also travel where is that I'm always this is um Mark um yeah this is Martin just outside yeah they let you take pictures Google that's what we drew was one of the Ts that you were reading about that's right really cool yeah they they you know they they had a few more green roofs I really have a great example County but solar they're going full sale and then lastly we are beginning an update to the County's municipal waste management plan this is a requirement that D has every 10 years we have to update our municipal waste management plan and the two parts that d looks for anyway are one we have to show that we have adequate capacity to dispose of the County's trash for the next 10 years in Regional facilities in Pennsylvania and neighboring uh the other is we have to

show that we are promoting recycling to the greatest extent possible we support Municipal recycl programs I'd also like to have a section in this plan this year looking at the permanent household hazard waste facility so we can get that kind of documented we can get it in a plan that'll help us go for grant money and also keep it in front of the Commissioners uh right now we are forming an advisory committee uh then we'll begin looking for commitments for capacity and and we'll just stepwise meet through plan and we have to have this done by 2026 uh so we're starting early because there's an extensive ratification program at the end we have to have 50% of the municipalities representing 50% of the population ratify the plan in order for GTP to approval so that usually takes a while is that recycling it includes Recycling and that picture this particular this is a yeah it's a MF it's a sorting facility uh I don't know which one it is I think I think it's it's not the mcara one because mcara the interior is all green I was looking for a slide that didn't have I have corporate names blazed all over it and then of course the quiz on the uh who's the staff member on the right there it's Veronica that's Veronica she uh she was on a tour and she joined the picking line for about a half an hour just to get the experience yeah so we'll be working on the Plan update and that's it right effective growth and preservation uh basically this is about accommodating residential and business growth in a way that enhances our communities and preserves our quality of life uh the three achievements from 2024 uh we'll start with schwanksville they've been updating their revitalization plan from 2010 uh and integrating the recommendations from their 2017 Main Street design guidelines uh and they're also building upon the multi-regional greenway study uh focusing on in this update uh the nature tourism and outdoor recreation uh so one of the things they

did in to start that process off in 2024 was some extensive Community engagement they started a public survey and had a visioning Workshop open house uh for the residents to attend uh in our ongoing Outreach for our uh Transit oriented development initiative uh we had a number of things last year uh we led a walking tour mobile Workshop where the community uh and Transit uh impact conference that occurred last fall uh we also are updating and have completed another walking tour for the um Glenside station uh and then we also worked with Amer to update their Todd ordinance U with the recommendations of our model ordinance and as a team effort we're going to pass it on to Bill and an here in second thanks Eric hello everybody um as we've talked about before here the 2025 tip which was approved in 2024 included $39 million of federal funds for the county to engineer and construct about 7 miles of the Cross County Trail that Federal funding will require only $4 million of County match these funds are going to allow us to really accelerate the development of and completion of the remaining 12 miles of the Cross County Trail uh in the county then I guess I'm can following the slides here okay in 2025 this this is going forward to 2025 uh this coming year we're going to be uh adjusting how we provide open space grants to municipalities and conservation oriented nonprofits for open space preservation projects through a more formalized open space grant program we are dedicating $2 million of County Capital funds for this program it'll be a more structured and rolling application process it will also uh

include uh prior to and during the application process a very robust effort to raise awareness about the availability of these funds with the goal of a resulting broader uh distribution of open space funds across the county because right now these funds tend to go to more uh uh proactive municipalities and organizations that know about the funds and we want everybody to know across the county that they're available and to apply for them hey Bill H yes the $2 million is that is that scheduled out in the budget for a certain period of time so as you know we the commissioner has only approved the upcoming Year's budget so this year we have $ three A5 million in the open space and Park expansion line item of the capital budget of that $2 million will be used for this grant program going forward in the projections we have $ three and A5 million do going out for the subsequent four years for four okay than I know I know it's subject to change just yes TR with Provisions is is that money to acquire open space it's it's money that's available to acquire open space to purchase conservation easements which is not a fee acquisition but it's rather the overlay of a conservation easement but the the overarching goal is to permanently protect whatever that land is whether it's through a direct acquisition or an easement 2 million is for the grant program what's the other million enh that's reserved for Acquisitions directly by the county we want to have money in our pocket so if we see a property that's worthy of preservation we can do it well Jonathan let me let me say that um quickly that um this money is meant to be uh used in partnership with other

funding sources and the more successful applications are going to be those that include a match uh by the applying organization or municipality as well as other other funding sources like dcnr or other funds that can be acquired we we're going to be looking for a multi a very mixed funding formula for these projects with our being just one piece of it so just one last question does the does the county have its eyes on any particular areas uh for County Acquisitions for a Watershed Association hey n why don't we get together because this is a pretty nice ecological area that uh we could probably acquire in some way do we have like a map or an understanding of where those areas might be so we are just about to finish a draft of our open space and Trail strategic plan and that strategic plan does identify areas that are of higher priority for example flood plane areas along the pery omen Creek would be one example of that but yes the answer is yes we will have a a map and a description of that okay so the two issues that I see right away I haven't had a chance to even look at are what the match is going to be and who has to be first in who has who has to be first in for these projects it's often the concern that you can't get and I don't know if it's still the way you can't get other funding dcnr funding or other money unless you have a commitment of somebody in I'm not asking for an answer but that's the concern the other issue is when we do a program like this we have to understand where the priorities are and what are the resources of the locations in which

these priorities are because sometimes we have communities that have a harder time finding a match but they're also the places where there are high priority areas yeah understood I'm sure that that's in your discussion bill it is it is and I'm just going to say as I walk away from the DI here that uh we're we're requiring a much lower match than other open space fund programs as a means of providing broader access these funds and not to exclude but that also addresses the amount of money so you know if you have yeah understood all these I'm sorry it's just my history and it's kind of so you don't have to answer we can do this offline we'll talk later okay I was the door opener Forum cling us yank me off the stage um so back to talking about school district enrollment studies um you've already heard that we've got a couple in the queue for this year and a couple more potentially for later in the year these are a popular product um the enrollment fluctuations that we saw during the pandemic that people were pulling the kids out of the public school system I think has largely ended if anything I get to be the one that goes back to these districts to say uh you should expect an uptick in kindergarten enrollment because of the pandemic um that's coming uh so really oh absolutely a small one and a brief one but yes birth rates were definitely up during 2020 and 2021 um in any case we are going to continue with this work um to to to provide this information to school districts and it helps them with their their own facilities planning and planning for the future um and with that I am going to um sorry yes we may have talked about

this in previous conversations at each individual uh motion to approve but do we solicit this feature that the that the Planning Commission does or is this all by word of mouth as school districts talk to one another about this particular feat uh I don't I don't advertise it um it's a time consuming project but um I'm just curious if I mean if suddenly it was a feature that the Planning Commission advertises they can help you with whether we would be having to turn down we need I mean some point I think Scott may have presented to the Intermediate Unit on the fact that we were doing this type of work but the the turnover at the um Administration level at school districts is um akin to the turnover and Municipal there's only new people coming and going so I do think that they they talk to each other to say that this is something that Planning Commission can do uh we certainly are we we provide a a good rate for this work we've served I think 15 of the 21 districts that cross over um so I'm pretty sure everyone's aware um and yeah capacity would be the issue but we also get these these contracts are what are they 3/4 yes the 75% this really is a revenue you know yeah I I don't we we provide a better rate than a private consultant would to do this the motivation for me is the service we're providing oh yeah it's an accessible service to District all right that's yep last initiative under the effective growth and preservation this is just a carryover from last year but what we want to do is do a municipal guide book for basically how to create adopt and Implement an official map there are a number of Publications across the state that have done a really good job of describing what it is and its

relationship to the municipalities planning code um but we want to take a different tact and really look at the how to uh municipalities could put one together and implement it in some of the legal aspects of that oh I'm nice why do I even bother say all right uh housing attainability um this is we talk about this a lot it's this idea of creating more opportunities for housing affordability in the county in 2024 um we made good on our promise to update our characteristics of new and existing housing units report uh this was something that we originally put together after the 2010 cus um and I think you will be hearing about the results of this work uh in the next couple of months but basically it is a a deeper look at the household characteristics in our new and existing housing units but also new and existing housing units by housing type and the the information that uh I think get used the most from this report is looking at the average number of school children by housing type which allows us to say with pretty um pretty good certainty that c units tend to produce more children per household than say an apartment unit would um it's something that gets cited a lot by developers and others who are looking to show the impacts of post development in a community but it is also really helpful for us as we do those School District enrollment studies uh we we need the information as well we also worked uh in conjunction with our office of Housing and the commissioner's office to put together the homeless forall Summit which took place in April of last year uh which was I think a well attended event that brought out a lot of good information on both housing affordability and homelessness um and as an offshoot of that Summit we started

doing local zoning audits to promote housing attainability U taking a a really close look at Municipal zoning ordinances from places that were interested in having us do this uh doesn't require a contract with us uh anyone is is eligible to to approach us to ask um to to look at how we might be able to tweak local codes to encourage affordability going uh in 2025 we are going to continue our our look back at trying to find things that need modernizing now that we have cross characteristics of new and existing units off our list we're going to update our Workforce housing publication series because we think this is uh something that could be very useful to our municipalities this was a publication series for those think it might just be see who might remember that we put this together but we put this out maybe in the mid off so it's been a while since we have Revisited this work a lot of good information in it has some model ordinance language in it but we're going to to update the information that's in these reports I'll take the examples that we're providing and the guidance that we gave back them uh and put it together in a easier to use package for people uh to revisit now we're going to continue the housing audits that we started we hope that more municipalities take us up on this offer and in 2025 we also hope to continue to be a resource for the county and the region a lot of things that we do here in this office that don't really get enough to you know it's not enough to give it its own slide but um Scott and I for example take part in a a weekly staff meeting um that the commissioner's office has organized on how to address the the lack of a permanent homeless facility so they've been working very closely with John to U

make this landale shelter happen which is really exciting um Prospect uh there are other other possibilities in the works but that's something that we're doing I sit on the Continuum of Care board which helps facilitate funding allocations to projects and the funds um that are allocated through HUD um we you know we we are here resource we want to make sure that we have the time available to put um staff time towards these various projects and passing it back to Bill to talk about okay three of our accomplishments from 2024 we completed the final 850 ft of the Penny Pack Trail in rockl burough this is was the final portion of the Penny Pack Trail within Montgomery County County it was also uh representative of the 100th we exceeded the 100th mile of county-owned trails uh within Montgomery County so this was a short piece but it made uh it got us over that finish line of 100 miles uh countywide the sker river trail 422 connector project in lower pots grve Township was fully designed and bid in 2024 and we're moving into Construction in the coming weeks that should start sometime in March and we anticipate that will be finished by the end of this year then lastly the trail Junction Center a project that has been around for uh many years uh was fully designed and all the permits were secured in 2024 it was advertised on this past Monday and we anticipate that contracts will be signed sometime in April with us soon thereafter construction start and we anticipate the construction will last about 15 months which would take us into mid

2026 for a ribbon cutting on that facility going forward into 2025 with the federal funding that we received uh in the tip from the 2025 tip along with County Capital funds all of the cross count Trail segments that you see here on this slide are active you don't see them yet hold on ah there we go uh all of the all of the segments that you see here shown in red circles are active projects on the Cross County Trail five of these segments are or will be in engineering shortly and one uh the project the Cross County portion in in erdenheim farm will move into the construction this year in all nine miles of the Cross County Trail will be built as a result of these projects those nine miles of the 12 that remain to be built in the county that big deal at the opposite side of the county big deal that's big deal you said that so pent because you have so much on plate that you move on to the next one yeah I'm trying not to think too much about it no I I know but I mean for us to recognize the kind of work that's coming out of your office I know that you're you're breathing very fast because you have to get through this but I want to take the time to tell you how appreciative we should be as a county not just as a Planning Commission that all of this work is getting done because it's astounding if you if you just even read it it's an astounding amount of work thanks B we appreciate that the Cross County Trail are you talking about I'm talking about all of them you look at all the projects that are being done and how much the increase in how we're moving forward on these projects that as other Transportation take no planning acquisition construction it's remarkable yes it's

remarkable thanks appreciate that so at the at the other side of the county from where we where we're just looking engineering construction of a on M segment of the sunrise Trail will take place at the Girl Scouts camp laughing Waters property in New Hanover Township this will represent when that trail is ultimately and fully built out will be the literally the final piece of the sunrise Trail uh we are using a trail easement that was secured as part of the camp laughing Waters preservation project that was completed back in 2023 and this project which will uh include a trail that will run through that blue area on the slide will also include a trail head parking lot and a foot bridge at the left hand side of that slide along New Hanover Square Road and lastly does that connect to other things at the uh so down here no over there ultimately yes this is literally the Terminus of what would be the sunrise Trail for now for now yeah should never terminate they should continue well that's someone else someone else's computer um lastly Trails advisory committee this is uh an idea that's been brewing for some time as you know Trail development is a huge part of our work I would guess somewhere around 80 or 90% of our effort goes toward Trail development and while the open space board provides input on Trails it was determined that a group of Trail stakeholders with in interest and expertise and trails and issues specific to Trails like Equity connecting into local communities would really benefit our work so that this this something that we're going to be uh creating this year and kicking off this year and it's going to address not just planning of trails but also operational issues as well and uh this was actually the

brainchild of of Brian ozac so I have to give him I short it was shortterm last yeah the last one it was short term again this one so this we're going to have an end point yeah we we we got distracted the nice way to people get on these boards is this going to be um advertised with the county has they have with other things and you probably have some idea of people that you can you know encourage to apply correct well I I this committee uh will be I guess different than a Bo it won't be a full formal board so right we probably people and ask thanks for transportation Evolution our top three achievements from 2024 was number one uh rid Pike section d right up your alley there Dy um that was uh completed substantially back in December and we had a ribbon cutting in November it was uh largely completed um excuse me it's $177 million project and we did it start to finish in eight years Jonathan the all the phras all the phases that you mentioned you know from starting PE to wrapping up construction uh eight years which actually is probably about half the time it would take if our commissioners had decided to take this to the tip they funded this entirely with County money and so we're proud to say that we got it out in what I would Teem is half the time uh the AV Aviation policy plan was probably the first ever type of in-depth look that uh the county and the Planning Commission released on Aviation issues here in Montgomery County and it focuses on things that every airport needs to to survive and to thrive and we talk a little bit about technology and and emerging Trends um but also things that the county can do and that uh our other partners can do as well so we took us about a year year and a half and we got that released and then

lastly the online map of Transportation grants that is something that really has been in the works for maybe 12 13 years when act 89 was passed um back in 20133 uh that opened the gates to particularly state grants for transportation projects and we started keeping tabs on it back then I remember putting together the first spreadsheet and over time Matt and and Andrew Turner as well and others have kept tabs on all of the projects that come in for all sorts of different grants so we are finally able to put it into GIS map it and now it's something that our community planners and others internally can use and also the public can look at it and see what investment has be made in their Community with these programs mat where do drones come in do they come under Aviation policy or not yeah they they they do they're talked about a little bit um that concern that we have to we we don't necessarily in that plan we don't necessarily deal with the the everyday retail type drones you know you fly up these are more um things that might be built more for delivery you know or or for carrying a payload of some sort payload is probably the long term that sounds like it's War but you know those are those are bigger things that maybe sometimes they can take off vertically times they need a Runway that's the type of more commercial grade drones that we get into in our plan Mt the airports in Montgomery County wings limeri potown that's it very good and only potown is publicly so that set that sets the stage for presumably some things for M 2050 if we want to dive in a little bit Aviation we have this plan to guide us so things that we want to do in 2015 uh the first one is a safe streets and roads for all grant that we are receiving it was awarded to us back in November we have to get the contract signed here this winter uh but it's a $400,000 Grant plus another $100,000 in matching funds from the county and this is uh something that we're going to be

using to look at the 75 miles of County own roads that we talked about a little earlier today the second one is uh starting construction on the rid Pike Improvement project section A and I do not want to be up here here this time next year with the same slide saying we're going to do this in 2026 I want us to start this year we're on track but we have some issues we still working through with uh norol Southern of all things so this is the piece that's closest to narst toown it's on the farther and Western Edge and that's the turnpike right here and that bridge in particular has to be replaced with bigger ones so that it creates room underneath it for the laf street interchange so this is a key piece to achieving one of the County's long-term like 25e R La interchange uh and then lastly here the electric vehicles Tool uh this is an online platform that uh Matt popek and John ler and I'm trying to remember Margo and Kevin and Tim ketti Rob and Anastasia they've all been working behind the scenes on putting this together and it's in a beta form um and so this is a just a toolkit for Amali and partners to use uh contains a model ordinance that Tim worked hard on has some mapping of existing Chargers potential charger locations Rob worked on that um and has a dives into the issues of EVS a little bit so this is something that we're going to be having wrapped up here probably the next couple of months at the latest maybe sooner and that'll be out and about the world and with that send it over for Planet technology and tools thanks uh and I'll step back in for this this is the seventh and final of the focus topics a little different than the previous ones um in that those were planning issues this is how this is to enable us to address all those issues and looking towards Tech technology in the way we um both two two facets communicate to the public or give them resources as well as our own analytical uh abilities using technology and advances that we now have so uh and it's

a much like a transportation project or Road Project it's it's uh uh some of these things take take quite a while to to build and then you get to the final uh implementation and it's it's it's a great moment um one of the things we did last year was the municipal survey of mcpc 247 letters uh which was again been about 10 years since the last effort in that regard and so it was a good time to reassess see how our letters are working I think we did made a lot of improvements over the 10 years and I think we affirmed uh some of that through that the results of the survey but we also got some uh new ideas and some areas to look at uh to work on continuing to improve this and then one of the big moments for me was finally seeing the mcpc subdivision and Land Development reviews portal uh come out to be released to the public um that also was a lot went behind the the development of that including the whole digitization of that entire process um but now that we had it we unleashed it and it's available to both the public and and staff anyone can now look at any application really back since about 2008 and up to the most recent month and get all the files essentially a digital file cap uh and explore it on a map basis as well and then our finally uh this one you haven't I don't think you've seen yet it has been released and we're going to highlight it a little bit as part of a focus on agriculture in the next month or two um as we start to hope the to see the weather tick up or the temperature tick up field of family interactive food and Agri tourism map project Steve zinsky working on with our GIS staff and uh will brings opportunity to let people explore and know where they can actually take advantage of our our farming activity and the products they offer uh so for 2025 uh we'll use that survey and update our 247 training manual um when we get staff turnover and new people writing letters uh that's a critical time make sure that we're bringing people on on board in the right way so that there's not a gap in the level of uh quality uh as well as uh

effectiveness of our letters and then the website itself we had this on last year and this is one of those it's been a little bit of a slow crawl a lot of things uh it's easy to put this one off and and address more pressing issues um but it's important uh we we feel our our user interface our organizational structure of the website is uh still in in strong need of of updating and overhaul plus we also have the fact that the County's website uh throughout for all departments is going is has a consultant on board to overhaul that aspect and that's going to probably take even a little longer 12 to 18 months so if we can get our ducks in a row in our website to the point we want it then we'll be more easily able to transition and hopefully inform the new countywide website with some of the things that we identify and learn and then finally the planning data Hub is another example well we built uh the data portal has been around since about 2012 and it is uh admittedly very long in the tooth as far as how it looks and and resources it employed back then but it was important and still allows a place to put our data uh and let let people access it there's a lot of new ways to do that and we have a a builtup GIS staff that's going to help us with along with County Planning uh to figure out how we can take advantage of what's on the market now and and how we can make the data more accessible and usable for both us and our our constituents uh so now have Ann jump up we in thinking ahead on what with the new 2050 plan the graphics for what that plan is going to be bound in what it's going to stand on as we go to do the website I think that should be coordinated don't you some way so we don't launch something and then have to change it because I mean we've been using that the the graphics from uh 2040

for all of our stuff so so we have new graphics already for 2050 where we'll the part of uh well you're about to hear about it um uh we'll talk about the the Drafting and design of the new plan which we haven't other than like logos and stuff fine I'm just saying you know I'm just thinking as we're trying to sync up these things we shouldn't be putting up a whole new website and then having to change graphics right now the point the point of this one is really to just reorganize and make it more uh friendly yeah intuitive yeah um it's been a long goal we just haven't never accomplished it um and so yeah uh those things are juggling and how we we're still over this year we'll be discussing how to treat the new plan and what opportunities right now we're we're already using like two other platforms that aren't on the County website the engage MCO the online re maphub uh those are new tools that have helped us with the existing conditions and and we'll have other features moving forward okay okay okay so comprehensive plan you've already heard about um we are working to create the vision plan the actual document for MCO 2050 which in and of itself is a lot of work and broken into several different tasks um I've already sort of talked about some of them as we presented on the transportation side of the plan earlier um we're going to work with our advisory committee to refine the themes and structure of the document um which I suppose sort of touches up upon the whole book of the document um ref finding the goals and action steps that we hope the county will be able to take going forward uh putting together the policy Maps that's a a big task um mat showed you the the land use plan um that

is part of our comprehensive plan already um we are currently updating the existing land use map which then feeds into how we might Envision the county in the future what our existing land jues might become as we go forward we're also working on Project inventories making sure that we have a good handle and not just the transportation projects that make it onto the tip but also the major uh environmental Trail and other capital projects that we would like to identify in this document to to queue us up for potential funding opportunities in the future uh and then lastly an implementation strategy how is this how will this all get done um hopefully by people more than just the County planning section um a lot of work that will be outlined in this document and we need to make sure that we are figuring out a way to to get it all into place and then all of the other related tasks that go along with ma 2050 the advisory committee will continue to meet throughout the duration of 2025 uh we continue to coordinate with other County departments and the Commissioners and their staff to make sure that we are taking their work into account and their goals and their planning um the out the Outreach of Engagement that takes place to make sure that the public has a chance to weit in on what we are thinking and then lastly uh the work that our uh Graphics staff will do to to drafting design the actual document and the the related work so that Scott signature program yeah and you you're uh aware of most of these um longstanding things including the implementation of the current uh comprehensive plan monco 2040 uh as well as the grant program itself uh and then our other programs with that have boards attached open space and farmland preservation uh will continue

uh operating their capacity uh the open space board will be part of that um open space grant program which is why there's not a committee of these members we we already have a entity that's well tuned and versed in that so we're going to utilize that for that program uh and then America 250 PA which I I mentioned in the front uh and then on the uh planning education side of things uh planning smarter will continue hoping to transform it a little bit we're still in the uh out thinking process on this um but rather than you know focus on okay let's have an event on this topic you know and do it here on this day um I think we want to consolidate a more thematic uh maybe uh not quite half day almost like many conference uh in a place and really provide value uh for people able to take time now they're scheduled to to join us and really focus on that so look forward to that we we'll be having discussions with you on that and then momy Awards will continue in its Excellence uh I think we're still keeping to the November timeline although that that always is a question um and the apaap conference uh this Department this county is so involved uh in a really impressive way if people don't know it both at the uh Regional chapter Southeast chapter level and the state level Patty serves is one of the four officers on that uh leadership and next year it'll be in Harrisburg so a little better than eie hopefully we get a lot of our staff out to participate in that as well and then Equity policy is a little different from those other items but still uh we talked you about that a few months ago and trying to bring that to the Finish Line in early 2025 and then core functions uh this is where we put I I I will not say everything else I think that diminishes it um but there's you know I think four pages in here with tables like you see on the right but highlights a number of things and they might be small they might be large none more larger than our act 247 review process which is not just you know the planners writing the letters but all of the uh infrastructure that

allows us to accept those and and and sort through them and deal with you know over 300 applications that come into our office each year alone from the fees that come with them uh and then in addition budgeting uh occurs in the section the data reports out of the County Section environmental with the ms4 storm water permits Grant Management across several sections uh agency coordination almost every section has specific agencies whether it's dvpc or pendot or uh or other counties Regional Partnerships um and watersheds U runs the gamut social media our Communications continues to be outstanding in keeping our presence uh alive in social media posts and and forming the general public which probably the best way to get attention these days and graphic design uh uh so integral to to so many projects and how things look and how they come out and how they're used and the office administration of course does keeps keeps what where we are going Eric will finish with community plan just a quick highlight I encourage you to go through the work program and look at all the 34 contracts and all the work that's being done and was done in 2024 um a lot of variety of work and and again the sheer volume of of work that the community planners pump out is always pretty incredible um we have 34 contracts in 2024 we did add Hatfield burough for a comprehensive Plan update uh we're still working through the four Regional planning commissions and working closely with them um we sort of decided upon a multi-year plan uh for adjustments to our fee structure uh to maintain our 50% recovery goal um and then of course the contract highlights in the in the plan itself in the work program itself just highlights from 2024 we did do a full zoning rewrite for upper Morland Township uh big project which was adopted um the satton revitalization plan uh was also adopted last year um we did some landscape regulations for multiple municipalities upper gwined and lower pots Grove revised their their land their landscape regulations and updated their tree

planting list uh and then another example of the the extensive collaboration we do with our design and urban planners um and so we did a number number of of Master Park plans one for Red Hill burrow uh and we also did a number of ordinance testing for lower southford Township and their Village commercial District uh as well as the new Handover Township and their light industrial district so we do a lot of work with design and they support us and collaborate with us on a number of projects heading into 2025 uh would be really the year of the comprehensive plan we have seven Municipal comprehensive plans that we're working on five of which should get completed in 2025 uh and we're still wrapping up three of our regional comprehensive updates those three for the Indian Valley Central Park and Pottstown should also be completed this year maybe adoption into 2026 but uh a lot of comprehensive plan work uh and then as you'll see in the work program just a lot of Trail planning some additional subdivision ordinance updates and not lot of zoning work as and before we open it up here Ur further discussion I just want to uh also mention U structurally the document also includes the appendix which basically just takes each of our actual sections and looks at their achievements and initiatives for the next year solely based on their kind of internal section Dynamics and and and program uh it's more to our benefit than it serves anyone else but um that's what that is and why it's there uh and then finally I just want to acknowledge and and say you know it's it's a long and difficult process to get from uh you know sometime in September or October to thinking about this to uh to delivering it here today uh and I'm fortunate to have such great uh sections and section management um that not only can you know take any ideas I have and help flesh it out and bring them to a workable product but also more importantly bringing their ideas in and and filling in the work program with so much good activity uh and and for the benefit of Montgomery County um so I'll uh close there and open

up well a lot to a lot in front of us um and obviously always short on time so I just want to open it up to board members for comments questions um just generally say that's really impressive do you know and I think over the past two years as the format has changed U I think it's become much more uh readable and understandable and it's easy to follow along and and make sense of what you guys are working on so I I commend you all for the amount of work that you guys do every year um that we don't even know about you know this is a snapshot in time right so thank you all for what you do very nice I want to one thing I had um reached out personally to Marley for her graphics on um County Planning that I hope a lot of you saw um she did a great job in showing where everybody saw this is I mean that's really helpful I mean some of us who are visual Learners I mean it's it's great and just to Echo and I've been I tried to stop for Bill who was probably thinking about the next five things he has to do in the next five hours we need to recognize the amount of work whether it's Trails whether it's the the 2050 plan whether it's all the stuff that's being done in all the Departments I mean the water I get confused with the perum and I'm sure you do with this one and that one and how they overlap all of this is turned out of Are We 42 what are we now 42 staff 40 well 44 positions 44 positions it's a humongous amount of work and everybody seems to be working full stop so thank

you and let's be cautious of our workload for people who are doing all this work because that is really important having an detective product that we don't burn our people out trying to get Co a to a c good by we we are focused we know a lot of these things drag on other times like oh we didn't do as much as we thought we would on that but we know why um I I feel better this year I think than I have other you know every year you look at it after especially after this presentation like wow that is a lot how we gonna do all that I don't know it it probably is the same amount but it feels like we have it more managed or we know how it's going to progress and we have you know better things in place and this just comes from the people here their time thank you to Von who's now um semi member of the Planning Commission I make a comment because she has a good uh kind of overview of what we're doing now speaking of work I can't keep leaving thank you thanks any other comments Scott we put press releases on like this sort of thing um we do a little bit of that with our implementation report which is coming in a in a week or two and you'll see it next month um uh for the comp plan um that's kind of more of the public Focus we that was a big change with this work program to make it a public document and emphasize our website DOL gave the great idea this morning of putting links on the digital document that take you to projects where there's a a map or product page and that we'll do that so um press release I hadn't thought about that um definitely give some thought the right we do the annual report which some last year is dragged a little tooo far this year we have it on target for a February release at least which is better that's more the I think the like

public relations document any other anybody Bob or on yeah um I I sound like a broken record but every time you know someone makes a presentation it enlightens me uh to the the depth of the Planning Commission and all the members you know from the top to the person who was just hired last week to make uh prints or or mail out Parcels or something but I mean everybody just amazes me with the work that they can get done in the time frames that you know that are are forced upon them and the end result is it's just mindboggling so keep up the good work um please don't change anybody and other than maybe like the director or something like that but um that all being said I just think everybody does a great job there thank you very much I only comment I would make is you know few years ago you changed the the structure of the work program and I think as we've now have a few years under under our belt with this type of format um it's taken not just the planning of the county but also planning of the the planning commission's um role in the county and how it will affect you know the near future and and the distant future um and how we move through the issues that arise in the county uh the issues that we've identified and and are trying to solve or at least trying to present solutions that may be viable and um but the work program clearly states the way or the

way the the Planning Commission staff thinks about the future of the county thinks about how every piece of the puzzle meshes with each other and um gives a clear understanding and we keep working through parts of the parts of the puzzle every year and how it clearly works through um Solutions and what the next what the things are in the Horizon that are going to have to be addressed or dealt with um and I think it's it's to me it's comforting to know that that that there is a that continuity I think program yeah I think the way that the staff works together and I think the way it's presented clearly State shows that there is there there are not silos of being formed by any kind of that it is is um Everybody linking what they're doing together and I think that just is is emblematic of the leadership directors and staff working together so I appreciate it um I look forward to seeing all those things happening um this year and those long range uh those long range tasks happening in the future and hopefully be around for that and I think it's appreciated certainly by me and I'm not going to speak for the rest of the board but clearly by their their comments and uh reception to what is given to us I think it's clear that we appreciate that work so thank you scottt do you ever reach out to your counterparts at the other counties and even look at each other or share documents like this to to kind of see you know how much further ahead we are than than our than our neighbors I've

just be kind of curious don't invite us to those meetings for some reason no U yeah I don't think that direct uh kind of uh sit down happens but but there's a lot I I know the other directors pretty well and there's lots of projects and efforts and certainly dvpc brings us together uh a lot so um uh whether we you know I you know depending on who it is in which county know there's some comparative notes that have taken place but um it it's uh I don't I don't know we we we have that that that pow out to that that extent unless we're actually talking about an issue that affects both all it's also a policy decision in the counties too I mean yeah I mean I think there's a there's a bidirectional relationship here it's policy decisions of the County government you know Commissioners in each of the counties um but it's also the I think it's also the confidence level that has been built up over years certainly prior to my my involvement in the board um but the the the confidence level of the the governing body to the department the Planning Commission Department to see that there's all of these things that all of these issues that are run or or where the Planning Commission touches and how much were and how much the Planning Commission involved in is there's a there's a there's like I said there's B directional relationship there and I think that may be different I think that's different make it atic I think that's different in other counties it is um and I know somebody that's involved in the buck County Planning Commission and there's certainly not that Synergy I think those between the and the planning sta yes yeah and I think that's just years and years of good staff members and good work that has that has come out of the Planning Commission to build that

confidence level and to build that that portfolio of of experience and work um and you know I think that's that's the difference I think we see in Montgomery County then I think you see in the more typical relationship of a Planning Commission and the County government and this past January we had the unique essentially three new Commissioners you know one have been there a year but we hadn't experienced that for for a while like it been more of a gradual one person leave another one come in you know all that but um there there certainly a few nights of restlessness and and and sweat on my brow um over how that was going to happen and how we were going to come out of it and you know I won't say you know everything's perfect in roses everywhere but but the fact that they got that message pretty quickly um and we tried to convey it as much as we could but that they got it and saw it and Contin to see it is so and and and rightfully so because the advisors that they go to Lee I mean I've had conversations with such I'm not sure all the board had I mean it's it's not it's not easily ignored the amount of influence and and and um and involvement that Planning Commission has in government of success is in the workload and the product right yeah and not just sniffing around but you know this board's contribution to that and that your the private discussions or or whatnot um helps immeasurably too we know that happens at different times so thank thank you for that recognize as being a think tank for policy I mean really and truly I mean we really present good ideas and we present them thoughtfully with a politically aware um kind of culture on how you get things done and we may run over time a little bit every once in a while

like first and for I enjoyed every bit of this today thank um the detail orientation here is absolutely phenomenal that is really what WS my attention very detail oriented and every single solitary you know information you provided you know just I mean I didn't have any questions to ask because it's right there if you just listen um so thank you so very you're being on both Sid that events here thank you thank you and you know it's more than just this group but we have lots of yeah you're sure absolutely um so I know we're running sh on time not over on time so there any other comments on that work program staff or anybody online not if not then I'll uh ask just run right into his director's report thank you they run back their Des working uh yes just a few things um I'll start with staff as always um our sad news to announce today uh Brian EK will be leaving us uh 10 years at the commission um both in community planning and then open space and trails has been a tremendous uh asset employee and we are certainly going to miss him uh and happy for him as he moves to Georgetown Delaware as the Community Development uh director uh as the George should be known for Community Development so anyway that that will be a new position open um so we currently

have three open positions uh that one has not been posted yet but we're in Pro progress process with that 'll let Let Brian go out the door before we grab his TK um trans planner one continues interviews have been strong for that and I we are very very close to assistant design section manager um so uh good new on that front by the next board meeting we might have both of those filled you don't know that's news to me great um accepted maybe maybe offer any accepted okay nice uh this Friday uh I want to acknowledge uh staff this is the annual County's staff service pins where they acknowledge in fiveyear increments people have been at the county for 10 years or longer um we have uh this and this year they're doing a lunch in rather than just a ceremony at the courthouse so that's nice um I want to acknowledge well Brian I don't know if you're gonna show up for your 10 year pin or not but you're certainly welcome to the lunch uh John leasher who has been here 15 years Matt Edmond 20 years Barry Jeff 25 years who was and bringing the trophy home Rita melie 40 years wow but yes so that's a we'll be celebrating their their activity uh I it was mentioned earlier that we we just finished our third Tod walking guide the or Glen side joining kakin and Lansdale as existing ones we have another one in the works as well so that continues to put those out thereze them on um think I covered the budget last time that that was adopted and everything I said last month appli changes so we're happy about the outcomes of that process maku 240 grant program now open uh the

deadline for that is March 1st and uh I also want to this was also mentioned but I did want to take a second to acknowledge um landale and it's and B manager serves on our board Mr erns uh and the partner parip with the county and uh finding an opportunity for a uh short-term Supportive Housing facility this has made a lot of headlines and been in the news and is a one of the most uh critical issues for for the people involved and for County and Lance really stepped up to to make something happen and that we hope to see that result actually open within a month or so yeah great um and really make it make an impact on citizens in those has actually nothing to do with it except be involved in all the meetings and had good people that really know what to do and how to get it done quickly so it's that's great thank you you're welcome Mr uh and then just to highlight uh it's the Voting is open for Pennsylvania's River of the Year there are three candidates in the per Creek one of them continues to be one of them continues to be one of them against the Del is the Delaware and what else the Delaware and the yogi oh no rating and the great rafting that's where they here's the bad news though we got Real Clear Politics on our uh giving us speed poll information on a daily basis uh Delaware holds 35% of the vote the Y one was 34% and Berman's at 30% so um we got some work to do some ballast of stuff yeah anyway if you just Google PA River of the Year you'll you'll find it it's actually the Pennsylvania organization of watersheds and rivers is

this like uh is this like a baseball Allstar voting you can vote as much as you want I'm not today probably so probably they them down have my children and grandchildren don't have yeah you don't have to live is places like $10,000 towards promoting events for the next year celebrating that River we can send out the link just recognition Okay uh that's all I have the event list which I'll are there any other party comments from board members anybody staff okay motion to adjourn motion to so m