Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

the Hinterlands yes exactly so I just have to dig myself out to 63 I'll be fine wrong the only the only very small headache was wiping the snow off the car which really was not a big deal problems right there are we ready is it recording right and we have a so anybody any other board members besides the three that I see [Music] all right good morning everyone we're going to call the Montgomery County Planning Commission uh monthly board meeting to order for Fe for February 12th 2025 uh let the records show that we do currently have a uh quarum of five board members um myself and Bob in the room and Jonathan Sandra and douy online um OED and John Ernst will be uh absent for today's meeting um leaves us work meeting for show up so we'll get started anyhow is there any board comments before we get started uh any board comments from those online Jonathan Sandra or doy any com in the room Nicole is lo what's that Nicole's oh okay then do I have a meeting do I have a motion to approve the regular monthly board meeting minutes from January 8 2025 don't moved moveed do I have a second second second moved and seconded are there any comments or Corrections on the on the

meeting minutes see none um seeing none are there any negative votes to approve the meeting minutes okay move on to our next part of the agenda public comment is there any public or staff comment before we get started with our regular agenda anybody in the room I just have one comment I want to um wish Matt Edmonds all the U all the luck in the world at the uh in his new position down in Chester County um I've always respected uh respected Matt and his his opinions we've worked on various projects together outside of this office and you'll be sorely missed um but Steve's going to take over your position and everybody will be happy thank you Father you're welcome any other comments any other public comment okay we'll move on to our next our first order of business which is the community planning assistance contracts do have Eric online for we do yeah good morningdale and wor Township morning all right all right how are you uh so these are the last of our 12 contract renewals that started January 1st 2025 uh for horam and Lansdale um so for Lansdale it is a renewal um we'll be completing an active Transportation plan for them um continuing some design support for a uh the railroad Plaza uh some zoning assistance for the downtown and we just issued them a housing memo so hopefully there'll be some opportunity to help them on some housing initiatives uh for horam we're wrapping up their comprehensive plan a full draft is in their hands and we'll be going through the adoption process early this year and then moving on to implementation which will include some ordinance updates and some grant writing uh also their planner retired last year so they wanted to bring us on to come to their monthly Planning Commission

meetings to provide planning support and technical assistance at that meeting as well those are the final two and you can read in the uh the costs and Municipal County shares as part of the resolution who are the planners for those two uh so well Tim stabb was working with Lansdale uh he's obviously leaving his last day is I think March 4th uh so Mike narit who's also been helping with the active Transportation plan and was the previous planner will be going back in at least for the interim and horam is Marley Bice so before us we have have mcpc resolution 25- 2.1 Community planning assistance contract resolution of February 12 2025 it contains two contracts contract number 680 hor and Township length of contract is January 1st 2025 to December 31st 2027 total cost is 93,471 [Music] burrow same length of contract total cost is $124,600 [Music] [Music] from board members on the resolution B anything anybody online okay seeing none are are there any negative votes to approving the resolution no there are not that's all the [Music]

count and Bob answered for everybody all right Eric thank you very much and we'll see you next year all right all right well yeah and we'll be presenting uh the ones that were approved uh for 2025 throughout the year as well I was kidding Eric I know I know I just was you know it was wishful thinking ER you and everybody else thanks uh our next order of business is uh the north monco technical career center enrollment study contract and we call on an can't we make that into an acronym uh nmtcc well no yeah I mean that's a how you doing I'm okay how are you good all right so um you could let me know that this is my last presentation for the year before the Planning Commission board I'd be okay with that no all right well so the the nor Monaco technical career center is a little bit of a different contract for us uh they're a technical high school there are three in Montgomery County and this is the school that serves the methacton north Pen peram Valley serton and WIA hicken school districts uh they're looking to do I I guess two things with this project they would like to see what their enrollment Trends are um but it's not the same as what we would typically do for an entire School District their enrollment is you know driven by interest in various career options not necessarily just housing construction and housing sales so we're going to take a little bit of a look at where uh enrollment changes might be happening

what their potential for growth in the future might be but we're also going to look at the career side of things what are the employment prospects for their graduates After High School what are the in demand careers in Montgomery County that these students might be preparing for what are other technical high schools in the county and the region offering to their students um and and trying to come up with um some recommendations there as well uh not something I'm all that well versed in but uh I'll be learning at the same time I'm writing the report what school districts did you say that they you said mathon North pen perom and Valley satton and the Wicken school districts you know an I never realized we had three what are the three um my Eastern monco is one and Western is the one that's up here around potown okay thank you like I said I'm learning yeah I'd like to the um the geographical uh distribution I'd like to see because the students that are the catchment for those schools might have very different interests in what they want in technical education but and matching that up with what we have now with some of the newer manufacturing jobs the jobs that have changed in manufacturing I think this is a really interesting possible study and it might some um information back to us even for comprehensive plan stuff uh I agree all of this you know all of these various projects add to the knowledge base that the Planning

Commission can offer to all of its um all of its planners and municipalities I way to tie into the comprehensive everything into yeah so before we go on too much because I want to get it I want to get the resolution in so if you can hold off a second Jonathan so for we have mcpc resolution 25- 2.2 short-term contract resolution of February 12 2025 uh contract contained in the resolution is contract number 689 North mon North monco technical career center length of contract is March 15 2025 to May 31st 2025 so have costed 6 , 426 with 75% going to the technical career center and 25% being picked up by the county is there a motion to approve this resolution so moved moved is is there a second second by Nicole moved and seconded are there any comments or questions Jonathan sorry I have cut you off I was just wondering is is part of the results of this study recommend to the school these are emerging uh technical fields that you should consider um in your curricula um maybe but probably not my understanding is that the state dictates the the areas of study that the technical high schools can offer so it's not like they can just start a new area of from scratch um but you know I think they want to have a better sense of what

the what the areas of opportunity are in the county yeah obviously they they see the manufacturing and the Pharmaceuticals and things like that um what are the salaries for these types of jobs what can their kids be expecting um just like I said I've never done one of these studies before this kind of hybrid thing so so we're kind of creating a new model as we go with this one yeah I might bring up go ahead John I'm sorry Jonathan why I asked that is that um going into this new study I'd want their expectations to align with our deliverables um I guess that's the way I want to say if they expect something we're going to deliver it or here's what we're going to deliver is is that what you're expecting oh well we we present them a scope of work from the outset and they modified what I had presented to make sure that I had the right data sources that they wanted me to look at so we're very clear on what the report will include okay great super thanks an any other comments or questions for the on the resolution and will part of your study be uh trying to figure out if there are kids that have dropped off of the school district roles and just in general and have not may have been interested in in a technical Technical High School um education or um I'm not sure we've considered that like kids who have fallen through the cracks and whose needs aren't being met by the Technical High School that's or by the school districts in

general um or or not or not um I guess the best way of KN where that comes to mind or why to succeed in a normal high school and pl studying and would more would thrive in a different type of different type of uh educational setting I think we'll see some of that because I am going to include the enrollment numbers overall for the uh students in grades 8 through 12 in all of the sending school districts so we'll see if enrollment in high school level drops off at all but I'm not going to do the same kind of projections that I would otherwise do in an enrollment study I'll mostly be using the state's projection data to just get an overall sense of the enrollment Trends in these districts and to see if any of that carries over to the Technical High School anecdotally like I could tell you that I mean I have family friends where two students were you know not not set out for traditional learning and were not you know thriving in in a normal high school and you know one one um parents were early early engaged in trying to get them into Eastern Eastern uh Technical Center and you know the other one was later to the to the to making that transition but once they move to Technical and were able to you know be exposed to different types of learning and learning something a skill that because they were not set out they were not going to continue on to a college or anything it just wasn't their their their pathway um they thrived and are thriving from that so just wondering how

many if that's something in the in the conversation so did you did you have something yeah what I was going to say is I think doing the study and uh aligning it with uh the school wants well but it may bring up the questions that we're discussing now even if that isn't in the original scope of work which may inform other decisions or other um interests from technical schools that note I would just add you our scope doesn't include like Outreach or interaction with students themselves or families so that but that may be a a spin-off of of the study that leads to the the school or districts uh pursuing you know more answers directly in that in that fashion yeah I mean I'm a big proponent of technical schools and and and um um skill learning it's just something I think that has been um what's the word having a loss of words stigmatized over the years and I think it's becoming less stigmatized um but had been for years um and I think it's something that's sort that's that's missed and probably um is is would be attracted to a lot more students than we probably anticipate so especially when they see the the rates of pay for technical people Farmers electricians yeah Carpenters I mean it's through the roof yeah any so just a thought okay any other questions or comments from board members staff public anybody else okay well any negative votes to approve the resolution seeing none resolution is passed we'll move on to our next agenda item which is our annual subdivision and Land Development summary and is Austin

online with us yes yes can everyone hear me yes I can morning everyone how you doing Austin good how are you good Rob you're bringing up his presentation or you're bring he's he's going share share away awesome okie dokie okay I think I have to move some things maybe can everyone see the slideshow yeah you want to you want to hit the slideshow on the slides show at the top and then you want to thank your computer a couple times all right good morning everyone my name is Austin Mosby with County planning and I am doing the 2024 annual summaries now if this presentation sounds like it's coming from someone who is doing this for the first time that's because I am so we have in our among our staff we have people who've been doing this forever and people who just joined us so I think this is a great refresher for everyone to learn a little bit about what this is why we do it and what it means so here we go oh and I put the slideshow in Eagles green I know I was gonna say something thank you Austin I was very smart of you to capture your audience go Birds okay so what what are the annual summaries and why do we do them so the the basis of it is the act act um 247 of 19 68 the municipalities planning code um this state law requires the municipalities in our County to submit to us their applications that they receive for um subdivision and Land

Development as well as um any changes to their existing um subdivisional Land Development ordinances and Zoning codes so we get these submissions throughout the year we review them and we comment on them and this report goes over the volume um that we have received and the details of the types of development that has proposed been proposed in 2024 so I'm going to be discussing the number of submissions we received in 2024 then I'll look at the acreage of the submissions the acreage um as measured by the size of the developments that are proposed and then we'll talk about the zoning um activity that we have reviewed um across the County jumping into our submissions we received 382 submissions in 2024 these were for subdivision and Land Development proposals um of that 145 were um new proposals new neverbe seen development and not considered resubmissions this is a look back since 20155 at the total submissions compared with new proposals and you can see in 20124 we increased from 2023 um but still not as much as we had in 2021 so we're still on decline there but making somewhat of a rebound this map shows us the submissions where they came from in the county the darker um were higher volume of submissions we received and the lighter were um fewer submissions we

received the trend is from the cent center part of the county we receive uh fewer and in the East and down towards lower Maran uh we get a higher volume of submissions okay so we're going to talk about acreage I have to be mindful of our changing measurements throughout this slideshow um this is the acreage of our submissions meaning the size of the developments that were proposed um in 20124 we received 599 Acres of proposed development this is 195 less than we received in 2023 from 2025 you can see in terms of the the volume the size of the developments collectively received each year to review it's a study a average decline in in the overall acreage which is very interesting Austin is that new acreage or is it a combination of new newly developed land and redeveloped land that's a great question and I'm It's a combination It's a combination do we know what the split is I don't have that between the new and like the the recent submissions Steve it it would be about uh just half I think this year we had um we had developed on 49% of already developed land so probably right around 300 acres is is what we've seen for uh new development and then another 300 for redevelopment on you know already developed land and is that split is that split typical for the last few years or are we seeing a trend one way or the other last year it was right around 50% as

well let me thr my camera on real quick um last year was right around 50% as well uh but the previous the the years before that I would say it's been uh right around in the 35% range so the past two years have been a significant increase um but the years prior to that have kind of maintained the similar Trend to what we've seen historically so let's you mentioned 35% 35% of redeveloped lands or 35% of newly developed lands of redeveloped so so before before 2024 um we've been seeing a trend right around 35% so the developments that have been coming in for uh our review the new submissions um those have been taking place 35% of those proposals have been taking place on already developed land so what I gather from that just to summarize we're seeing a greater amount of applications that are redevelopments as opposed to development on new land on on undeveloped land correct yeah thank you then we're really yeah yeah so so what we're seeing is repurposing of properties most probably I'm assuming in the the areas that we have always wanted to focus for development or Redevelopment as opposed to Virgin land seems like the trend is headed that way right now it's probably it's probably also densifying um those areas if we looked at it with multiple layers of information and just you know when it comes to actual construction we do have exact figures on whether it's going into a developed or undeveloped land or or

you know those different land future landage categories um we do not do to that extent on these proposals um but that's something we could we could do if we wanted to when do we do the uh when do we do the construction numbers later in the year right they usually get presented in June they they take a few months to get through the boa before they we have a full set can we uh when that comes up can we break out that number and get an idea of what absolutely I'm making a note of that Redevelopment yes go ahead Austin back to you I just mentioned the uh the decline in the collective volume um of acreage of the of the proposals over time since 2015 is pretty notable this chart shows the acreage um by land use type about half is residential and the other half was non-residential in 2024 um and I'll get more into the non-residential breakdown later in the presentation so one question on that the residential does that include multif family yes that includes multif family um and single family attached and detached and how about the multif family if it's if it's involved in exuse development like a to or something is is it that's a really good question uh the the residential and non-residential components are counted separately okay so if there's commercial space it's it's in that 20% or whatever number I'm not even sure oh it's that 17% if there's commercial space as part of a TOD it's in that it's in the other numbers and the residentials into the residential part of it that's correct so we've got a couple of things that show

up on our top 10 large largest proposals that are both showing up on the residential and non-residential SES okay got it thank you that was a great question Steve every once in a while Austin okay so I'm gonna go into more um breakdown of the residential versus non-residential submissions and now our measurement our unit of measurement is units um here in this chart we're looking at the residential units proposed from 2015 into 2024 and I want to point out that 2021 started a sharp Decline and then in 2023 pretty much leveled out in 2023 we had 2006 units of residential proposed um and in 2024 we only had nine more than that um 2015 so it's pretty pretty level um what's interesting here is even though the volume of submissions that we received has increased we had about 200 more subm missions for review um the acreage is down and the residential units is about the same so I thought that was interesting looking at the types of housing that you um had asked about earlier this chart shows us that um one thing that really jumps out right away is that multif family dominates the housing type um by unit number of units um year after after year between 2023 and 2024 even though the number of units was largely the same one notable change between the two years um you'll notice with single family in 2023 there were far more attached single family units than detached and then in 2024 that flip-flopped and we had more attached single family than

detached um this map shows us where the most units came from across the county and in Upper Morland there were two major um two major developments proposed that's why that municipality is so dark the top 10 largest um by number of units is shown in this map here and those units by name are here so we number one and two the two largest um proposed in the county were from upper Morland here um just to just talk a a little bit about the age restricted components in relation to the overall number of units we received to review um there's just like the overall decline in 2022 uh that sharp decline in overall unit units leveling out in 2024 that change is is somewhat mirrored with the age restricted units there's also a decline in the number of age restricted units after 2022 and a slight increase in 2024 shifting gears to non-residential and our unit I'm measuring is in square footage this chart um I want to point out that after covid there was a gradual incre increase in the square footage of non-residential development proposed in the county and then in 2023 dropped precipitously um from almost 7 million square feet to 2 and a half million square feet which is really important to note it's a very sharp decline this is a breakdown um had mentioned before that with our acreage it was about half residential and half

non-residential this is a look at the non-residential and with the non-residential square footage it's split about evenly three ways between institutional Industrial and Commercial it's about a third each office was less than 1% of the square footage that we received to review and where did distributions fall do they fall into the industrial distribution centers yeah should industrial yes where yeah where distribution centers yeah do Austin do you think the big drop off is because the count is running out of large tracks of land to build this sort of um building that's a good question I'm not sure I would think not does anyone have any input on that who knows more than I do about that I would say it's um more because of just the saturation and that that 5 5 million is huge so uh the pipeline is is thicker and a lot of that was came in on speculation we didn't as when we get them we don't know who's going to be operating there and oftentimes the the applicant uh doesn't know or or you they certainly don't say but sometimes they don't even know so it's really just that that is the sector that has just you know ballooned especially since covid but was starting off already with changes in in shopping patterns um so I in my mind it's more of a a reactive slowdown just to the volume of activity because that 5.5 million the year before was was immense in terms of anything we we've we've seen you ever have conversations with the Commerce Department to correlate back and forth between the numbers that we're seeing and what the cause and effect of some of those what they're seeing and what the cause and effect of some of the number changes might be mean

you may be right about what you're saying Scott but I just didn't know if the Commerce department has ever been discuss we' ever discussed these numbers with them to find out what their analysis of some of the changes or some of the trend changes are yeah we we do talk frequently and um I think they're I I honestly what I hear more for them is from more emerging sectors um the data center issu is something they've really been uh Fielding a lot of calls on and work on uh the warehouse stuff is is a little more quiet in terms of you know it it's not as uh you know flashy or uh or whatnot it's just you finding the right location and enough land and people have done that and they've that's like you see that's kind of responsible for the glut um but yeah we the Commerce is um since you know they turned over I think I think we've had more Market activity uh feedback from them uh and that's kind of going into some of those thoughts in the competence plan as well as to what what industries are emerging in Montgomery County and what we can do to uh help where we want to um sometimes there's some challenges that are bigger and weren't before such as you know utility companies and how much they are willing to supply you know if there's an economic development opportunity I think that's one of the pinch points as well right now that's being worked through we seeing you see it in the construction industry also you know year and a half ago you you were out 40 45 weeks maybe sometimes even a year to get uh barjo for a building because all these companies like Amazon and Target and Walmart have bought up all the production capacity for barjo because they were building these warehouse distribution centers and now that timeline has come down to like you know 30 35 weeks because there's a lot less

of that that market being taken up in in speculative Warehouse construction I me I'll not one sorry go ahead 5.5 million of industrial like that's a huge number a number and when you you pull that out of those 2023 numbers all of a sudden what's left looks a lot like 2024 so that right there is a huge blip a huge Market blip and I wonder how much of those is how much how many of those are occupied I mean I know I passed one up on 309 going out towards doown not not doown out out yeah no Quaker Town excuse me outward Quaker Town and before you get on the bypass where it turns in the highway there's a large distribution center and I've passed there probably 3 weeks ago and it looks dead well there a lot there also Stephen I think there a lot when you look at where these are being located a lot of them have to do with Road access and limited Highway access and I know that there's still huge amount of um warehous well uh space available along the connector uh in Franconia those really there're several humongous buildings still sitting there and I don't think they're occupied as of now they may be you know in the near future and I wouldn't see anything but a lot of that was you know anticipating where there's going to be any Improvement in Highway access also well East n and there's an Amazon center that is dark used to be Walmart and now and it never opened right so yeah and Scott's right there there's a lot of things that were built on spec some of it opened a lot of it didn't of course that's going to be a challenge in a couple of years when those owners start to figure out you know Amazon's not coming in they pulled back but but a lot of them have lease payments anyway like the one in East Norton Amazon's

paying every month okay all right Austin take us to our take us to our next detour of conversations uh this map shows us the concentration of square footage of the proposals for non-residential development uh with West nartin having um High concentration square footage because of a facility there um a psychiatric treatment facility was was built there or was proposed there rather and um dolsey as you mentioned um with the location of a lot of the development proposed being near the highway access this map is the top 10 uh proposed non-residential developments by square footage and you can see a really clear Trend numbers three four and eight and the description will be on the next slide numbers three four and eight are in the area of the Lansdale exit on the Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike numbers 710 and two near the Willow Grove exit on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and numbers 9 six and five are along the 422 Corridor 422 the only one the only one that's not is the one you talked about SM yeah are those units you don't need to be near you don't need to be near a major highway for psychiatric location and finishing up here talk about zoning so in accordance with the municipality's planning code we review proposals for amendments that are proposed in the each municipality for changes to their zoning code and their subdivision and Land Development

ordinances and also their zoning maps that are required um to accompany zoning ordinances this chart shows us the volume we received um year by year in 2024 we received 87 um ordinance amendments to review and 22 map amendments to review it is a slight increase since 2023 um and it looks like we may be on the rebound there because there was a a fall a decrease starting in 2021 and 2022 so it looks like that trend is reversing and to wrap up here summarize um in 2024 we had 382 um submissions that we reviewed for Division and Land Development ordinances and conditional use reviews of those in that we receive 599 Acres of proposed development that was about that was split about evenly between residential and non-residential acreage for residential in terms of the units there were 2015 units proposed that we reviewed in 2024 nine more than in 2023 and multif family proposals continue to dominate non-residential SPL split fairly even between commercial industrial and institutional uses um and less than 1% was office and with the zoning um amendments zoning map amendments and zoning ordinance amendments we received 109 to review that's 15 more than in 2023 and that wraps it up good job any uh any questions or coms comments for Austin from members on the online Austin I this is Jonathan I think

you did a great job the only thing I would suggest is next year try to put a little more analysis in the numbers the numbers are great and very interesting but you can see by the questions from the board we're asking like why do you think this happened or what is the reason for that that would be uh useful information for us if you had a perspective on that next year thank you for that feedback Jonathan any other comments no I'm fine okay thanks Austin and I agree with Jonathan a little bit more depth you know just so we can get in correlation with the numbers great so all right next up is our monco 2040 implementation report and with that I'll call on an might as well just turn the rest of medeor in uh you had your chance to excuse me would never think of doing that an all right I am opening up the PowerPoint and here we go all right um all right so as you know or maybe you don't know you're new to the board we put together each year an implementation update uh for our current comprehensive plan we're always talking about monco 2050 but it's important to remember that we have a monco 2040 uh and that a lot of our work does tie back to the comprehensive plan not just from the Planning Commission um but from other departments as well so um we take a look back each year at the ways that the Planning Commission has been implementing the goals and the themes of

our current comprehensive plan but also reach out to other departments to to ask about their work over the prior year and their goals for the upcoming year to see how their work has been implementing the plan as well um we have three themes to Mona 2040 um I have memorized them because I talk about them a lot we've got connected communities sustainable places and a vibrant economy so we're going to talk first about connected communities uh the goals of a connected community theme are to encourage collaboration and Partnerships among the County government and other stakeholders to improve our transportation quality and give options to workers to uh get to work or in today's case not get to work uh expand and connect our County trails to to other nearby assets and to support strong downtowns and Community destinations in 2024 we continued the m 2040 implementation grant program which you will hear more about from me haha uh in a couple minutes we uh continued the County's Dei work uh which has been uh under the microscope a little bit uh but that work will continue and um and that department is being expanded to help the county expand the de work that it's doing we continued progress on the Justice Center construction across the street and uh released RFI for the Ara Street prison Health and Human Services as usual is super busy and does a lot of Outreach and partnership work um the Office of Public Health conducted a community health assessment that had a lot of great public input um that we have been um talking to our colleagues about so we can incorporate some of those ideas into our comprehensive plan County launched its food policy Council

uh we had new members join the yourway home Tom of Care Community um and we do interesting things like I I particularly find this interesting that we're surveilling the County's Wastewater outflows and testing for disease incidents so that we can do a better job of keeping people healthy we had big Transportation infrastructure improvements take place uh Ridge Pike among them uh and we also had progress made on some of the um office of roads and bridges Bridge reconstruction work including the Reconstruction of mil Creek Road Bridge that's the the picture that you see on the left um we also are proud to see more bike Lanes being installed uh across the county uh Trail construction is also a big part of this we completed construction of the Penny Pack Trail in rockage to connect into Philadelphia we secured funds for ongoing cross-county Trail projects we are moving forward I say I think I say this every year but this is actually true that we are moving forward with the trail Junction Center work uh and construction has been advertised for this project to actually like get going which is amazing uh and we received Grant funds from the local Share account through the state for money to go toward another portion of the Cross County Trail uh we supported strong downtowns in a variety of ways uh our office of Housing and Community Development has helped a lot of different programs as what and helped with physical infrastructure improvements and and other similar projects through it cdbg program and the allocation of funds there uh the green Resource Center continues to grow at the Northtown Farm Park and then all of the other planning work that we do in our office through our community planning program and the the design work that Patty section

does in 2025 I think you're going to see more of the same I'm not going to go through this in too much detail but I think um other than all a lot of the projects that I was just talking about continuing I think you're going to see some interesting work come out of the uh planning for the celebrations for America 250 and the the work that we'll be doing at the county to help promote the this 250th birthday sustainable places is the next theme uh that we are a county with amazing and wonderful neighborhoods and communities that need to be sustained and improved for the future goals of this themee are to support a modern resilient green and energy efficient infrastructure Network to improve our storm waterer management to conserve the natural resources and other sensitive areas in the county to give people more opportunities to exercise and have Healthy Lifestyles to support housing choices and opportunities and to enhance commun character in 2024 we did um a lot of work to support housing needs including uh wrapping up the emergency rental assistance program which I included here just because it is it's big um and getting the information from other departments I didn't realize that the scope of this program the county provided you know through various funding sources over $123 million to 9,843 households from 2022 to 2024 to people who needed you know emergency assistance in just staying in their homes um a lot of people and a lot of money I just found it to be really um inspiring um and you know we've we've

done a lot of work to establish additional code blue Emergency Shelters um which is also I mean it's good and it's bad um it's it's bad in that we are stretching resource is kind of thin and or the volunteers that run these shelters kind of thin but um but it's great that we are able to provide resources to people especially uh on nights like this when it's cold and snowy we promoted access to Healthy Lifestyles through projects like the County Trail challenge uh and we work to enhance Community character through um issuing Community alerts through our health and human services department to make sure residents know of extr extreme weather events we transitioned through our Office of Public Safety to Next Generation 911 and we just wrapped up a year-long countywide Emergency Medical Services study in 2025 um lots of things to look forward to uh our office is going to submit the Wicken water quality improvement plan for approval and implementation and we're going to begin the county storm waterer planning update uh Veronica is going to continue the hazardous waste collection events they're always very popular and well attended uh we're going to continue that trail Challenge and we're actually hoping to to launch a similar challenge to encourage people to visit some of the uh counties farms and other agricultural related events we're going to continue working on implementing the homes for all plan and providing health support to people throughout the county last but not least vibrant economy a strong economy is really important for all places including Montgomery County this gives people the ability to earn and spend more money it gives the government County government that is um the ability to make the infrastructure improvements that we

would like to see and it helps businesses grow uh goals are to improve Transportation access to businesses to encourage development and investment where we already have the infrastructure to support it uh and to attract and retain businesses and asset where we would like to see them in 2024 uh we continue to move major transportation projects ahead U continuing work on the 309 conector project uh potown K Street Bridge which has been closed for a very long time actually went out to construction and will be a great asset to add back into pot Town's downtown we completed phase one of the SRP service Serv development plan which would extend rail Service as you know back out to potown and Beyond to reading um our tourism and hotel stays continue to recover post pandemic uh that is uh something that we are definitely keeping an eye on as 2026 like I mentioned with America 250 uh is bringing a lot of events and potential tourism to the region and we invested in the County's businesses and workers uh we approved cpay projects and King Russia supported Grant submissions to the state uh provided MCO forward loans through the Commerce Department to local businesses and they also um continue to hold their careers of Tomorrow Expo which you see in the upper left to expose uh local students to potential career possibilities in 2025 uh we are going to continue our work to expand Transportation options to residents of the county including continuing to work on the SRP partnership uh I hear that we've got a solid partner in Chester County in that effort uh we're going to partner with the Valley Forge tourism board to promote the County's Regional assets uh the county Montgomery County

that is will continue to work with the Norris count Chamber of Commerce to provide additional capacity and funding to to help them with their growth uh we'll continue to promote Small Business Development Centers and continue to have uh support Workforce Development programs uh particularly aimed at Youth and a little bit more on this we each year talking we were talking before about where growth is taking place uh you can see here that we we do look to see where our housing units are being built whether they're being built in our designated growth areas or outside of the areas we we've decided that are appropriate for development you can see here that almost everything is being built in a growth area or an area that we think has development potential um some small amount of units are being built in rural resource areas but uh most of these places are On The Fringe of what is already developed in terms of our non-resident nonresidential construction I think nearly everything was being built in a designated growth area or a development potential area like 99% uh and similarly we we reevaluate each year our uh Transportation projects that we put into MCO 2040 uh our um a program Transportation projects that is to say project that had funding attached to them at the time we were working on this plan are nearly all complete at this point there are a handful of projects that have not moved forward uh and even our vision projects the ones that we wanted to put in the plan to identify as things that we were thinking about even some of those have moved forward or have gone to construction as well so it's encouraging to see that the just the act of putting this plan

together helps us stay organized and helps show um funders and others that we have projects that are ready to go and that are ready to be implemented uh and that is this year's implementation update any questions any questions or comments from board members online NOP see Jonathan Nicole sandre anybody so this was presented in front of the Commissioners yes last week or something had that go over um it went fine they did not really have any comments okay got it it's good to see a lot of a lot of the progress going on and be interesting you're running running out of things to accomplish so we need to come up with a new comp plan soon uh I'll have to think about that yeah get on that yeah in your free time I I'll save for the director's report but there's H some on that note uh some upcoming events and and profile high profile uh announcements towards towards new activity out of the commissioner's office that we've been part of a tease yeah we to tease us um okay then we'll move on to our next uh our next agenda item which is the mono 2050 advisory committee and this month we're talking about preservation and Recreation and I got a cast of characters here so who's start this one and David starts the next one ify I head that okay so remember um I'm gonna hand this off

pretty quickly to our open space can I talk from here is that allowed you're you're fine to our open space and I don't know if I have to stand up there uh to our open space and trails group but I just wanted to uh introduce this by saying that we've been having meetings with our advisory committee we had another one and we feel that it's very important even though half of our mcpc boards sits on the advisory committee to keep all of you in the loop with what's going on so we have an Abridged version of the presentation that we gave to the advisory committee plus we've taken that the next step taking the feedback from the advisory committee and meeting internally to come up with some vision statements for preservation and Recreation that we want to share with you today so similar to how you've seen other topics we have Bill Ellen Donna Steve presenting here about preservation and res Recreation which includes Farmland preservation obvious but he doesn't sit with that group here anyway uh bill it's you go right ahead okay thank youe good morning everybody you can hear me okay yeah per great okay okay and can you see the presentation okay all good yes great okay good well uh good morning again uh thank you for having us this is a tag team effort as Chloe mentioned and so um I'm going to start off here just to get us rolling and one of the slides that we uh showed to the advisory committee and that you see in front of you here talks about how pres the top ICS that we're talking about uh within preservation and Recreation also tie to other issues that

we're addressing in the comp plan transportation land use uh the environment and sustainability as well as health and wellness and that theme of interconnectedness is something that you'll see flow throughout this presentation and obviously it's uh something that is important to us and to make sure that we're aware of those connections and that we're honoring them and the and the visions that we're coming coming up for uh this portion of the comp plan so today we're going to be focusing on trails open space and county land and uh so the remainder of the presentation is going to focus on these three areas and initially we're going to provide you with some foundational information I'm going to talk talk about Trails Ellen and Steve are going to talk about open space and farmland preservation for Steve and then Donna is going to address the topic of what we're calling county land and then I'm going to swing back into the presentation and talk about seven broad trends that we developed as part of our presentation of the advisory committee and then those are going to be followed by five vision statements that we developed in the time since the advisory committee meeting that we're going to present to you uh for your feedback so jumping into Trails obviously uh you know as well as anybody that the county takes great pride in our trail system there's a multiplicity of benefits that come with trails and while the county and our section and the Planning Commission favors the development of all different types of trails at the county Le uh level we're really focusing on what we call multi-purpose Trails not nature trails that you might find in a park where it's a single tractor Trail or through a woodland these are multi-purpose trails and on the left hand side of this slide

you can see some of the minimum standards that we apply when we are developing trails around mcgomery County they're typically off-road they're a minimum of 10 feet in width and they are multi-purpose they're open to use by pedestrians and bicyclists and actually equestrians in some cases and some of the more rural areas of the county multi-purpose trails are uh always paved and that pavement can come in the form of asphalt or it can be a compacted aggregate like you see in the bottom right hand picture on this slide if you've walked or ridden the perky Omen Trail you'll know that the upper stretches of that trail are a compacted aggregate it's more than adequate for bicycles as well as as walking and with our Trails we always strive to follow guidelines for accessibility to meet multi-use Trail standards that's paying attention to the American with Disabilities Act and the guidelines that come from that as well as ashto guidelines that uh address things like slope cross slope width and so on in terms of the benefits that come with Trails again these are things that you're all very familiar with but we like to reiterate them we have an opportunity like today but Trails provide immense value in a bunch of different ways they provide recreational value they can serve as a transportation resource to allow people to get from point A to point B to reach reach key destinations around the county whether it's a shopping center or a park and we're always striving to improve that accessibility Trails have environmental benefits it gets people off the road and it gets cars off the road and trails also provide and these are some of the Lesser discussed benefits of trails but they have social benefits it provides an opportunity for people to get together to socialize and of course the health and wellness benefits of getting out on a trail and walking and being out doors

and getting some physical exercise are also really important when we talk about trails in Montgomery count County we really think of them within the broader networks and when we talk about networks they're important because they will boost the impact of the trail system indiv individual trails are obviously important but when they become part and tied into a broader Network work the impact is greater and there are multiple layers of trails that we look at when we think about Trail development within mcgomery County more regionally and broadly there's the circuit Trail Network which is the map that you see on this slide this covers Southeastern uh Pennsylvania and a number of counties in Southern New Jersey the circuit Trail network is an envisioned Trail network of about 850 miles or so right now about 450 depending on who you ask miles of that Network have been constructed which is pretty incredible uh obviously the the further you get along that pipeline the harder it becomes because you've addressed what you might call the lwh hanging fruit in trail development and getting those final 300 uh 400 miles built is going to be hard but a lot of work is happening to make that uh a reality and things like the federal funding that we just received not just Montgomery County but other counties is going to give a boost to building out the circuit Trail Network when you zoom into Montgomery County itself this is where we focus on something that we call the primary Trail Network and I I know you've seen this map before it's kind of our guiding force when we think about Trail Development Across Montgomery County this really represents the highway of of trails within Montgomery County the key arteries that get people around to

different parts of Montgomery County the development of these Trails as well as other circuit Trails happens at all different levels it can be work that's performed by the county it can be Trail work that's uh performed by municipalities as well as nonprofit organizations so it's a a multi-level development uh scene and process and without that uh wide ranging group of organizations and entities building out the trail Network would be very difficult it's requiring work by a number of different partners when we talk Steve yeah are you uh are you seeing any movement in the fund in the federal funding as of yet due to some of the changes in the executive orders have you seen any of that trickle down to some of the projects you're working on uh no not yet um obviously that's something that's on our mind but our philosophy right now is just to keep plowing forward until we're told we can't or shouldn't uh because we just we can't afford to sit and wait for that to be sorted out whether it's congressionally or at the judicial level so but no we have not heard any any noise from pendot or others at this point Steve let me just jump in real quick uh we had our RTC meeting yesterday which is the Regional Technical committee it's basically the Planning Commission as the Planning Commission is to the County Commissioners the RTC is the D RPC board so tip actions go to the RTC before they go to the the the dvrpc board and uh we got an update from staff that uh the list of uh changes to the tip from January's meeting um were largely put on hold because a number of them include things like raay the the discretionary program raise and there was a couple other things in there as well um protect

and some other stuff and uh that all is being held up by Federal Highway Administration they want to let pendot process those tip changes because it's part of their overarching review um I don't think Matt they mentioned carbon in particular as being one that was on that list but there is palpable fear that Carbon money which is being used to fund a number of Cross County traal segments will sooner or later fall into that review Matt do you have anything that there were no carbon actions on the January tip but one of the ones that was there was an earmark Congressional earmark that is now also being held up by FH anyway so all kinds of concern and questions at the moment I think the message of we have to keep continuing until someone tells us to stop is currently the best way to go yeah yeah bill is the primary Trail Network map that you showed on the previous slide is that on on the County's website it it is Jonathan if you go to the parks trails historic sites web page in the left hand side of the web page you'll see a link to the the trail Network map thank you okay um so on the local Trail front obviously even though the County's focused on building out these arteries and and highways of trails like the perky and skook River Trail Penny Pack Etc it's also really important that uh local Trail velopment is Advanced so that they can tie into those arteries and this is an interesting map because the green lines that you see there are portions of the primary Trail network but those um I guess they're orange or brownish uh lines represent local trails that uh have been developed around the county and you can see where they're starting to tie into that Network this

is a long range effort but the goal of course is to maximize the number of local connections into the primary Trail Network so in terms of the Planning Commission role is really to advance the trail development pipeline that includes everything from feasibility studies all the way through to construction so a few fast facts about today's Trails right now about 100 plus miles of the primary Trail network has been constructed about 92 miles of County owned and maintained Trails have been constructed keep in mind that that number of 92 includes smaller trails and places they they may be more nature oriented type trails in places like Green Lane Park or Laurer Park but they also include Trails like the skuka river trail or the Penny Pack Trail in the last 10 years almost 14 miles of primary Trail Network Trails have been constructed including the closure of three major Trail gaps which you can see on this graphic at the bottom uh including the skookul river trail the skook skook Hill East Trail the Chester Valley Trail and the Penny Pack Trail were all uh Trail gaps that were closed looking forward in 2025 about nine miles of primary Trail Network Trail will be in or begin engineering which is great that'll really start moving things forward and we anticipate about four miles of the primary Trail Network to be constructed in 2025 alone so I'm going to flip it over to Ellen who's going to jump into open space and Ellen just let me know when you'd like to Advance the slides and I'll do that sure okay good morning everyone um so I'm going to give an overview regarding open space in the county and so just to kick things off to consider what is open space and looking at these photos you might think it's

simple to Define open space but it's really not and it's interesting to see how we all might view open space so just starting on that top left and moving around on the photos you know just posing some questions is this manicured Public Garden open space stonely and Villanova is this local Farm the cornfield in lower Frederick open space is the trail bridge the perom trail bridge across the perom open space how about this Cemetery here Riverside Cemetery in Norristown what about this small Urban Park lywood Park in ardore and then this last photo here is this Urban prominade open space panco Landing in balak kinwood just in looking at and considering these images um you know maybe at broadens your your view of open space a little bit um so we just thought that was an important question to kind of start out with um next Slide the answer yeah fs and needles um so open then coming to open space here in the county and broadly speaking we're talking about land that is undeveloped or has little development and it's frequently used for recreation conservation or agriculture you could see the list there on the left ranging from natural resource land that's that's untouched um and you can read the list there um going all the way down to those Urban green spaces and public plazas such as we saw in the previous slide um and then it's really important to note this

little list down below the photos um that some public space is I I'm sorry some open space is publicly owned by government some is privately owned some is publicly accessible you you can go there and enjoy it and walk upon it and some isn't some is protected forever and much more is not um so we can go to the next slide so then looking at the mechanics of open space preservation how does preservation of open space happen here in the county so each year now the county budgets approx imely 3 A5 million to fund open space preservation projects and this money is used both by the county itself for fee uh Acquisitions of land and also grants to municipalities um and nonprofits conservation organizations such as natural lands for open space preservation projects and we use specific criteria to assess if a proposed Open Space Project would be a good use of these County resources the generally the county fee Acquisitions they focus on land that is adjacent to existing County assets such as County Parks or other county-owned land and County trails and also land that's ecologically and environmentally important um and it's important also to understand that the county open space grants to municipalities or conservation organizations are usually just one piece

of a multi-partner fending formula um so that gives you a little bit of an overview you can go to the next slide and then today's open space so this map here depicts land that is permanently protected open space in the county today and you'll see in that pie chart in the lower right that the ownership falls into seven different categories um it's either owned outright by government entities federal state county municipal or owned by um nonprofit land trusts or it's private land that's protected through conservation easements um and as as of 2022 when we were working on the return on environment study and we developed this map for that purpose there were approximately 43,500 Acres of permanently protected open space in the county and the county has a a very strong track record of open space preservation for over the last 30 years in 1993 the county open space ordinance was enacted and your Vice chair dolsey flarity played a very integral role in that effort um and then lastly just to note that a new County open space grant program will be rolled out this year and just as is done with open space projects today these applications will be reviewed by our County open space board who will then recommend the projects for

approval or Not by our County Commissioners so um that's just a very broad quick overview on on open space in the county and um that's it all right so we'll flip it to Steve if you want to talk about the Farmland slide Steve yes hey everyone um yes so preserve Farmland is an important component of the County's open space inventory uh on the map here to the right it might not look like a lot but when you consider how much of the land in the county is actually already developed and you focus on the left half of the county um it is a considerable amount of land that we already preserved about onethird of our Farmland is currently preserved already um so that's you know that's good to note um we also have a very diverse uh very diverse farming operations we have Farms that grow World feed crops all different types of livestock dairy farms Christmas Tree farms um equestrian centers uh so we definitely have a very diverse uh farming operation Community as opposed to other surrounding counties uh there's definitely multiple benefits for farmers and the land and the community uh there's Financial benefits environmental benefits economic benefits we can go into those and break all those down one day uh however we do still see that challenges do persist when it comes to farmland and the Farmland preservation program uh the younger Generations are simply not really wanting to farm uh farming is becoming expensive the land is expensive equipment's expensive uh all the different fertilizers just about everything when it comes to farming uh it's becoming more and more expensive among other things um this is leading to a more Innovative thinking from the farming Community um how they can come up with different re R new streams to uh

you know increase uh their income a lot of our Farmers you know they have to work outside of farming you know so uh in addition to getting up at 2: in the morning to Tender their cows they still have to go to a full-time job um or you know part-time so giving them the flexibility to uh have these different revenue streams like Agri tourism um you know really benefits them uh and as of now we do have 10,582 Acres preserved on 191 different farms uh so the program is definitely thriving uh and dare I say it's better than ever all right thanks Steve all right so Donna you can jump right into County Land all right good morning everyone um we came up with this term County Land to distinguish it um from the the rest of the open space um this is land that's owned by Montgomery County or managed by County staff so there's three types of properties um that kind of interact with each other of the different types so we've got our um managed and unmanaged natural areas Parks historic sites and Trail corridors and then uh various ownership Arrangements leasing easing um land so that an example I like to use is Norristown Farm Park which is um operates as a county park it's managed by County staff um the property is actually owned by the Commonwealth um and we manage it through a lease agreement and I think then we also turn around and lease it for it to be farmed so um definitely multiple layers going on there um and as Ellen alluded to

previously um they're varying uh ranges of public accessibility some of our County lands you know are open and accessible to the public others such as the natural areas they're more just conserved as open space um and aren't open uh next slide please all right so how much land are we talking about um there are more than 6,000 acres in the county system um the vast majority of this land is in parks um as you can see in the uh Kelly Green there on the map um those are kind of our three Flagship Parks um in the county and then we have uh historic sites too and those are usually on on smaller areas of land um and the attendance at our County Parks has been following the trend in the increased demand for outdoor recreation so that's seems to be on the rise people are getting out and using our facilities which is great um next slide please all right in terms of how all this man gets land U managed uh that responsibility Falls to our County Parks trails and historic sites division um so any time that we're looking to expand our system whether through Acquisitions of property outright or uh for Trails this you know puts a extra Demand on their capacity so it's important for us to like coordinate with them and make sure that that we're all working together um so that they're adequately staffed and funded um to take over the Acquisitions once we you know uh complete them in the Planning Commission they get turned over to the parks department um next slide okay and finally our historic

resources so aside from um the sites that the county manages um as public facilities um there are other you know Montgomery County is known for its Rich cultural heritage um and so we support the communities um that do historic preservation ordinances and have uh historic commissions or boards as part of their local government structure um so a lot of that work is actually done at the local level um and over half of the County's 62 municipalities have adopted historic preservation ordinances um a lot of them a fraction of those have been updated within the past since the last comp plan um and then in addition to the historic boards and commissions they're also nonprofit um historical societies that are the repository for Community archives um so that sums up our County resources um I'm going to turn this back over to Bill to talk about our funding partners he Donna any s do you have a sense of how many historic buildings in the county are in a state of disrepair o gosh I do not I don't know if any of our historic experts on staff have a weigh in on that just in general because you know I'm working on two projects now where you know they're they're we're struggling to find an economic Way Forward in preserving the

buildings um one of them's not actually listed as store but it's you know it's a it's a substantial building and it's I'm just wondering how many of them are in dis repair and or are or do we know whether they have been um analyzed for whether they can be saved or not so you mean buildings on the St register for St reg or or that or that a Township deems is historic you sometimes townships have ordinances that deem certain buildings historic but they're not on the registry so that's you know I wouldn't I think there's probably I don't think we have that data but I will say that at least for County Land my understanding is perhaps the only one that's on a county Historic Site currently is sunrise Mill that is not up to that has that needs to go through some major uh renovation but I'm not aware I mean again I'm not the expert on it I just know that that is one that it's not open right now because it and has been open for years because it's not it's has it has go some renovation we don't we don't I mean we don't really do much the way of a start we don't have any prison down the street that we're trying to work is is there a listing of all the county owned historic resources yes Jonathan that that will be on again with the same web page um that has the County trail map on it um the parks trails and historic sites division in the County website I guess I need to look at that I I know I know we have a historic resource survey that we've done or did or have worked on but yeah in terms of um the state of each of those properties of course when you get into the Burrows

it can be you know into the answer is many can be in the state of disrepair but maybe part of a national register District but um that would be interesting data to get though there there was a study back I think in the a was the last time it was in external group or agency not not I don't believe the county un unless we helped with it but where they actually did go through extensive lists and and catalog properties but I have not heard any effort to that since unless it's been at the local level I was going to add to to Stephen's comment though like and again I'll speak to to L Maran who's pretty active in this this Arena um they've got a ton of properties you know in their own class one or class two historic register and really the you have a full range of properties that are um either you know meticulously kept up and maintained to those that need need work and part of the strategy of course and this this isn't any Illuminating news to you I'm sure but just want to point out you know a lot of that zoning and the reason why they're on those lists is because it offers opportunities for more flexible development different uses even different uh expansion rules that are greater than might be in that District uh or base District Alone um that that encourages or the where the goal is to both maintain and and make it feasible for the owners to to maintain uh through added benefits uh that still keep the historical Integrity intact yeah but I would tell you that there seems there I mean I've read read quite a few things there seems to be a trend to use historic designations as a way to control develop to to limit development um of properties so there is there is a I know some of the things that I've been reading about um that there is a an effort among using using historic designations whether they be local ordinances or in a registry or trying to get them M registry as just as to

stopping the expansion of any kind of development on those properties or in those areas I mean that's been happening for years yeah I know but it's just it seems to have been ramping up that's long been a debate in the historic preservation versus sort of development Community is the the you know local Local District um local districts being whether they are an Ascent or an impediment to to communities ultimately well we're seeing that with we we mentioned the prison um you know there's a the base district is 10 stories in just in terms of height in Norristown and then the historic district uh you know limits it to you kind of your adjacent neighbor which might be you know something like five or six stories uh depending on the location and so you know that's significant and it's sometimes it's not intended I think I think you're absolutely right Steve there's areas where that's used as a we as a tool or a weapon um and then there's areas where it's in maybe more inadvertent uh but has a similar effect and then then there's areas where like I said I think I think L Maran has the opposite approach um because there is more flexibility uh we should work to get more codes uh that think that way I think all right uh are we good to move on here okay so before I jump into those seven Trends I just wanted to mention quickly some words about our partners and our funding so it goes without saying that our Partnerships are really important to the work that we do we couldn't do the work without them uh we're involved at all different levels in all of our projects whether it's during a feasibility study engineering or construction of trails or in the preservation of open space um and uh adding to our County Land assets and this vend diagram just gives a representation of some of the

organization types that we engage with ranging from State agencies nonprofits utilities the sepas of the world the North like Southerns of the world you can see there many of them with overlap in certain areas among the different types of assets that we're talking about around the county from a funding standpoint the same thing is true and again it goes without saying that we need money to do the work that we do whether it's constructing engineering and constructing our Trails or preserving open space or expanding our County Land assets and again you can see all the different types of organizations that we work with they go all the way up to the federal level like we were just talking about with the carbon Reduction Program funding that we're using for the Cross County Trail all the way down to municipalities uh and obviously a really big important funding source for a lot of our work our County capital funds and you can see in the middle of the V diagram here that that applies to trails open space as well as County Land so the trends so these are the seven trends that we came up with uh we spend a lot of spent a lot of time brainstorming on these and we feel that they're representative of e issues that relate to all the topics that we've been talking about here and we tried to make them uh things that we need to consider uh that we have been considering that we're currently considering and that are certainly going to be important in the years ahead with respect to the comp plan so there's seven of these and just bear with me because I'm going to read the trend verbatim and I'm going to make a slight mention to some of the data that you might see on the screen but I just uh we spent a lot of time wordsmithing this and so I want to respect that when we go through these so the outdoor economy is Trend number one and outdoor recreation is among the nation's largest economic sectors believe it or not that was a bit of a surprise to me it does Drive Commerce it

creates jobs promotes healthy communities and this sector of the economy has seen and it's anticipated that this will continue continued growth at all levels locally regionally and nationally and the data that you see here on this slide indicates that the real economic output for outdoor recreational activities this is whether it's tourism dollars or Commerce or you know money that people are spending on Outdoor Equipment grew nearly 36% between 2012 and 2023 so and it's anticipated from some of the data that we've seen that that trend is expected to continue in Pennsylvania alone there was uh roughly $19 billion dollars of money contributed to the state's economy through the outdoor uh uh outdoor economy sector so it's big Trend two health and well Wellness the health and wellness benefits of outdoor recreation continue to reach wider and receptive audiences active Lifestyles continue to grow in popularity and I think we all saw this during the covid-19 pandemic I think it uh kicked a lot of people Outdoors uh because they had no other options for getting out and gaining some rest bit from all the stresses of of covid-19 you can see that the data shown here indicates that participation in health and wellness activities has steadily increased and that's the graph that you see in the bottom left uh that focuses on participation and that the health and wellness Market has grown and will continue to grow through at least 2028 and that's the those are the financial figures that you see uh there on the right hand graph and when we talk about health and wellness it's a pretty wide spectrum IT addresses Fitness IT addresses Health Nutrition uh sleep um appearance as well as mindfulness so it's a pretty wide ranging topic But it includes all of those

things and so when you look at these numbers that's what they're representing yeah people care about their appearance apparently okay Trend three that's why I'm sitting next to you I look really good all right Trails as Transportation trails are popular for recreation but their use for active transportation is yet to be fully realized we have found that people talk and use Trails a lot for recreation but are they really being used to their full potential as a transportation resource that's a question funding for Trails as an active Transportation alternative has definitely expanded at the state and federal levels um Rails to Trails data does indicate that people support the development of trails as a means of non-motorized transportation and and trails as an active Rec recation resource have innumerable benefits including you know allowing people to connect uh by walking and biking it improves Public Health which we've talked about already it obviously would reduce carbon emissions and it would encour and it encourages economic investment that uh uh is happening along these these Trails as well as the local connections that you can take into uh communities from the main Trails within the county Trend four Outdoors for all so accom accommodating and improving access to and awareness of our outdoor wreck assets is critical to creating Equitable and diverse use of our Trails parks and Open Spaces like I just discussed on the prior slide about Trails as transportation funding uh at all levels

um is growing and it's favoring projects that address issues related to equity a common and uh well-known example is the Regional Trail program sponsored by dvrpc and the uh William Penn Foundation uh Equity is one of the criteria that they apply when they're evaluating applications for funds from that program and as many of you know about five years ago the county adopted the trails access diversity and awareness study which is a really Landmark study for the county and we've been actively rep uh implementing the recommendations were in that study since then and data and research that you can see on this slide shows that challenges to achieving Equity remain and you can see some of the the numbers in that bottom leand graphic some of the challenges to achieving full equity and that a lot of public park and wreck agencies are striving to make their facilities more accessible and welcoming but as that graphic shows work remains s um work is being done here challenges remain to get it done and uh but it's pretty clear that local agencies are committed to doing this and uh continuing to pursue it kind of ignoring the current political climate Okay Trend five environmental and economic benefits so the environmental benefits of open space and Parkland are very well documented an example being uh the return on environment study that the county recently did a couple of years ago the impacts of climate change continue to reiterate the value of open space as a as a mitigation measure and that list on the left there represents some of the environmental benefits of open space air pollution removal protecting our water

supply uh improving our water quality mitigating floods providing habitat for wildlife and of course carbon sequestration and storage and then the economic benefits again reiterated in the 2022 return on environment study have also been proven increases in home and property values were shown in the return environment study uh as I discussed earlier uh open space promotes economic activity within those Open Spaces but also adjacent to them Environmental Services like the ones that I just described on the Le hand side of the screen there also provide econ economic benefit and then of course there are direct use benefits uh when you look at things like the recreation sector and uh keeping people out of hospitals and active at work so the environmental and economic benefits are pretty well proven when you talk about open space Trend six technological innovations technological innovations related to Recreation continue to grow in popularity probably the two most most well-known and seen uh Innovations are ebikes and fitness trackers I don't know how many people in the room right now are on this uh meeting have a fitness tracker on right now um or use one when they exercise uh but they are very popular ebikes as we all know uh and see are becoming more and more popular um location aware application data is also out there this means uh what I'm talking about here is the ability to buy data uh from that's gathered from some of these apps that would allow you to track where people came from when they come to a trail or an open space and even where they go to after using a trail or some open space there are propriety and

privacy issues related to using that kind of data but we want to put that in here because it is something that's growing in popularity and obviously would be beneficial to have some data related to those things to understand how people are using our spaces where they're coming from and then where they're going um so have uh the data clearly shows that Fitness tracker and ebike sales continue to soar and you can see that in both of these graphs uh on this slide I mean if you look at ebikes on the right hand side there you can see that just in the past four years ebike sales have essentially quadrupled and there's no expectation that that would slow down and then finally Farmland uh ution uh and Steve alluded to some of this when he talked about Farmland preservation earlier but as the cost of farming continues to rise and Farmers seek new ways to support their operations Farmland across the county is evolving to include new and alternative practices in addition to what we would call conventional commodity Crop Production like corn uh or soybeans and how these Innovations uh and evolving practices will affect our Farmland preservation efforts will be an important part of our goals and recommendations in the comp plan and as Steve said things like Farm stands hay rides corn mazes pick your own um all of those alternative sources of revenue are continuing to grow uh and evolve so this is an important topic we want to be sure we address all right so before we jump into the vision statements I'm going to flip this quickly back to Chloe and then we'll we'll go into those vision statements right so you've seen a version of this before but it's different now as we have continued to work on how are we thinking about what we the policy content we're putting into this plan what kinds of how how are we going to organize what we are

actually saying in the plan so here's where we are now first we lay out a vision for 2050 what do we want 2050 to look like how do we describe what we're going for Big Picture aspirational Broad statements about what we think 2050 should be like and what we're hoping for uh then we'll lay out then we lay out some goals what types of things do we want to happen they're more specific some many may be measurable and then the recommendations are really action steps and that's where we get into what does the county have the power to do what does the County government have the power to do to move the county in the direction of this Vision that we have for 2050 so we're working on all of these in all these different topics um and today what you're going to see is this highest level related to the content that you just heard about so what are the what is the vision for 2050 can we describe what we want 2050 to be like in terms of farmland and historic preservation and open space county-owned land what is our what is our vision there so that's that's what you're seeing today and we are working on the other things too okay so before I flip to the next slide um these slides are really simple they just have the vision statement I uh Khloe and and others an and Scott um uh I think the intent here is for this to be a source of discussion with the board to hear your reactions to these vision statements we're happy to answer questions but want this to be a a robust conversation about these just TimeWise we have about 20 minutes left there five vision statements not that each one needs to be four minutes but I just want to make sure we can get through these so we're not cramming two into the last

three minutes of our our time available so with that we're going to jump into our vision statements first one being trails and the statement is in 2050 the county will have a multi-purpose trail system that is accessible and well-connected don't we already have that uh no I don't think so I mean I our view on trail development is that there's always work to do um when you talk about accessibility you can be talking about local Trail connections you can also be talking about accessibility in terms of it making it available to people of all abilities well connected uh again is talking about those little local connections but also connecting out you know to Trails that sit on the county boundaries as well as among our primary Trail Network Trails so um I I don't think that we can say that it's fully accessible or fully connected Cross County Trails example of one that's not fully connected at this point but if you're just doing the sko river trail of perom that's you know you can go to Green Lane the Philadelphia and that's well connected and accessible but you're thinking of some of the other places where we have pieces they're not there's there's pieces that are missing sure so should that be said that it's well that would fully accessible and well connected or I I just I'm I'm trying I like the question I feel like it could be maybe stated in a slightly more ambitious way that's what I was just going to say more of a aspirational type vision statement as opposed to a statement that is connect sorry to use the P the word but connected to what we're already accomplishing um so that that's that's my thought on this

on this vision statement I think it I understand what you're trying I understand where you're headed with it I just I want it to be more more Visionary and more Forward Thinking I mean we're already working towards the accessibility and the and con and the connections of the trail system um you know the vision statement should maybe talk about being fully accessible and and and the uh achieve the goals of connecting whatever I mean I we can come up with come up with different statements but I think it should be more aspirational as my thought Steve just just just that's a good point and just add a little bit of context we've had a lot of debates internally that revolve around what you just said um in some ways I think where we seem to have settled for now is that our vision statements tend to be pretty broad like this because when we get the goals and then the recommendations that's where we start to put in some of the more Visionary more specific things that you were saying so right now you just have Vision them on the screen yeah but I don't think this is Broad I think this is I think this vision statement here just to me it's it seems like we're already working towards the accessible and well connected Trail multi-purpose trail system in the county I mean that's been a as bill has said I mean it's been a goal and we've been very successful you know through many eort many people's efforts to expand the trail system in the county and I think we've done a great job but there's more to do and that should be the vision statement I mean maybe that's what you add the word more in well whatever it is but you know tra system I've said enough it's a good point I'm just pointing out that we don't have the goals and the recommendations yet which might feed into the context of this yeah and and and build a bigger picture but I want to get too much more detailed in

the vision statement I just want it to be more as I don't hear you asking for a lot of detail well one other thing that you know what what to to Stephen's uh comment is that we are Montgomery County has already been seen regionally and nationally as a leader in trail development so I think U putting that somehow into it you know we we've achieved it and I want it noticed and I want our vision statement to say we're recognized for our you know multi-purpose you know intensive accessible multi-purpose Trail connections but does that does that go into a vision statement or does that go into a leadup that's a leadup in the in this section of the comprehensive plan as to sets the stage for what the county has achieved and because we've achieved that this is where we want to go next but it's not stated here well stated in a vision State that's what I'm just saying would would it be in in the comprehensive plan as a leadup to our achievements and this is why we want to this is why our vision statement is aspirational to to expand upon what we've been doing anyhow okay thanks Dy mentioning that and yeah it can go somewhere yeah yeah joh I I I have no comment on the vision statement I would just want to add this when we talk about connectivity before it was said the trails is transportation when I'm in my car I'm going to the grocery store I'm going to the post office I'm going shopping if we think of trails as

Transportation trails to get to these places for me to get on my bike to go there so the connectivity to me is not just to another Trail through a park through an open space but it's to someplace that I would otherwise go in a car if I'm going to reduce my usage of car of my car yeah Jonathan that's a that's a great comment and I think that maybe that uh specific or that more specific uh goal would be something that we could talk about in the goal section you know where we're not just talking about connectivity amongst the trails but to uh practical destinations for people like you were listing right yeah because if achieve some of those goals it's not just to take a nice bike ride in the park it's to to not get in my car and get on the bike and go someplace that was part of the conversation I mean I I know one when we were had the breakout sessions at the last uh meeting that we had or advisory uh committee meeting that was one of the conversations I remember my group that we were having was about just that is it's the next you know the vision should be not only just having well-connected Trails but also to figure out into these business centers so people can use it just like Jonathan said as as transportation and with ebikes it's a little bit easier to you know buy groceries and you know bring them home right be able to get on a bike and go do something without having to get in a car just um Jonathan I I just looking at what we kind of scratched down for goals um for this Vision beneath it and it speaks a bit to what I'll just read through it super quick goals expanded

local connections Regional circuit Trail connectivity safe new Transportation attractive to people more people use it for communting to work or school school more people use it for trips to places of worship shopping and other daily activities so the thought is that then in the goals we would get down to that yeah yeah yeah that's that's right on that's a that's a a really good comment okay I not I don't want to cut people off but just trying to be respectful of time here I'm going to thank you for all those comments those were great um I'm going to jump into the next uh vision statement could okay this one's for open space in 2050 the county will have a variety of Open Spaces that are geographically dispersed with multifaceted benefits I like that anybody else is there geographically dispersed does that fly in the face of you know being accessible like likes and things like that this is open space so I think it's obviously if connect o space to our trail system then that's a added benefit but I think geographically dispersed I think leads to and you correct me if I'm wrong bill and his group um I think the idea here is that everybody throughout the county should have some access easily access to open space that um is either beneficial healthwise or just beneficial from them being able to enjoy open space without you know being in an urban community or a developed Community

or developed area I mean so I don't know that it's necessarily it' be great if they were walk active right through some kind of trail system but that'll know that's necessarily some of our more urban areas those Open Spaces could be connected by Sidewalk as well so that could again if we think of it a little more broadly that there's other ways that can we can get there besides a car right it could be it could be a pocket park in amer or it could be you know uh you know 50 acres out somewhere in the western part of the county so right yeah that's that's right on target we were trying to get exact to exactly what you're talking about um so that that that distribution or dispers of open space makes it more available to a wider uh demographic and of people um from uh different areas around the county and right it could be a pocket park in a more urbanized area or it could be Camp laughing Waters which is 450 acres we just want to make sure that it's spread to provide uh as much equal access as possible think multifaceted benefits is a good a good goal also not all of it has to be pastoral land it could be um just we talked about a pocket park that may require that may provide a playground set or something just something that people wouldn't ordinarily have access to exactly any other thoughts on this vision saing from board members anybody else okay picked up time there Bill all right sweet okay next Farmland in 2050 the county will enhance its agricultural Heritage by continuing to preserve farmland and support the economic strength of the farming

Community anybody how do we do that I think that's in the goals I think we're just looking for the AR vision of what the what we want to see the county achieve in 20 by 2050 and then the goals would be how we get there if you're gonna if you're going to State it in 2050 the county will have enhanced its agricultural Heritage by preserving farmland and support of but I think what what we heard in the presentation is the change in the the face of of what activities will be happening on our Farmland so I think there has to be something might be something in there that reflects that diversity in um the use of our preserved Farmland like locally sustainable you know food food source resources is that what we were thinking about something along those lines bsy yes and but also the issue of the blending of AGR tourism with our pastoral Farm Fields you know I mean it's also having access people understanding where their local food is coming from people having the desire to connect with the farmers who produce their food all those different components not just a farm over on the hill that looks pretty our farm community will be changing will have changed I mean you see a lot of these you know like the trend now is or has been for a while is these Farm to Table type restaurants but where are those Farms you know is there a restaurant in Montgomery County that's you know that talks about being farmed the table but are there farms in Lancaster or their farms in Montgomery County there have been some that they they have trouble staying like VI um one point is in Mainland tried a couple time this last try was to

Farm to Table be local Farm to Table and it in it closed yeah that's a tough that's a tough thing but along those lines just you know I think it's just what I'm aiming for is the recognition that the vision of what forming will be in 2050 may be very different we may be in the process of getting there but we're not quite sure what it's going to be but we're going to embrace it and encourage it to keep these as actor of agricultureal the other thing is that there was always I don't I didn't hear it discussed the importance of having access to locally produced food I mean for security reasons you know that that that's kind of where I was headed yeah food food source and you know along the same lines and I think actually this is a vision that I don't know what the goals are that they set again but I do think that the work that Steve and the team have been doing already with um having the annual thing with the farmers map that's already been published I think this is one that there's a lot that's already been worked on and that that team is probably going to try to have some creative brainstorming on more with what they can do to do that so yeah the food policy Council just who just initiated in January uh fulley is a big part of that so our plan our to to Do's point which is great our plan needs to reflect that I think the the actions are ahead of the plan in this case but um and I think it fits with even within this Vision as is the economic strength really the goals can address those specific things towards AGR tourism that I think fall within that but that's that's good good comment yeah yeah it is thanks Delsey okay are we okay if we jump to the next one any El anything I think you're good okay all right so for parks in 2050 the county will have

outdoor parks and recreational spaces appealing to an array of interests for people of all ages and abilities do we not already have that well I mean you're you're kind of asking what you asked about Trails like do we need to make this more appealing I I don't know the answer to that qu I mean that's a question that we should answer but you know you're bringing up the point of is this creating enough ambition well I I also think um what you have recreational space is appealing and welcoming to all arrays of interests or you know whatever the the changes is in words there but I think that's really important welcom difficulty well I think that people have to feel welcomed to our Parks I I wonder if we need to add that reflection as in some of the other vision statements about the geographic location Diversity to this statement good point once again I would I would I would try to craft this more along the lines of being aspirational and what that spec specifically is what's missing what's missing in our and I this is I'm not necessarily looking for an answer but the way I think about is what's missing in our Park system and our you know current Parks or current geography of parks or current availability of parks and what are we trying what what should we be filling in the next you know 25 years to achieve what what are those goals to to enhance the park system in

County next 25 years that were currently not currently not um providing yes somehow get the word out to the general public that maybe the pocket for instance a pocket park is in amer where you can take your grand or right there's there's a passive Park in Green Lane that you know with plenty of parking and handicap accessible and things of that nature that a lot of people don't know of and I mean we know about it because we're aware of what's on the you know the andom down Planning Commission mapping and everything else but I mean the general public really well it comes it comes down to marketing and communication about all the things that we're going to be putting into this plan and I think we're going to have to do some work on that and I think as we progress on drafting and a lot of even you know editing by committee is really hard so I think we're getting some ideas from the vision statements and I think then we're going to work hard to take some of that and add more energy and um and more Bolder aspirational ideas and the vision that's what I would like to see that that's where I was headed with with my comment on Vision St yes I know Stephen it's very beig very beige I said it's very beige I would want you know is there is there something out there I mean I'm sure there is because we can always we can always aspire to you know create a better Park system um what does that mean and that should go to me that's what should go into the vision statement for Park system is we we want X because right now we don't have enough act or we don't have any

act but but again I mean just to restate what I said before there's goals and there's recommendations that fall underneath this and sometimes as we've been debating internally what's a goal what's a recommendation particular sometimes you you list one in one you're like it could be the other but those things are where we really get into the meat of what that means but we the top with but the title here is vision statement it's not goals I think there's aition there's a difference between a vision statement and goals so let's not get I'm clear as to what the difference between the two are and and speak you're pointing it out and I'm speaking to the vision statement exactly that's what I'm saying Stephen yeah statement should be you know why would ask sometimes and abut sense of the parks I you know repeating myself is what is it that we're missing let's f like that right and my point is it's just different taste right you could you could be very um aspirational in the goals instead of the vision or you can do it in the vision instead of the goals it's we've had that discussion internally about where certain things fit and the lines between them all and just because it's not in here doesn't mean it's not going to be dealt with in another part of this but again we're taking the feedback and we're that a very that very well may be true that the the goals that are that are being thought about are that more aspirational but the first thing that somebody's going to look at in comprehensive plan are going to be these vision statements and these vision statement should reflect the the the goals that are that are set out and why the goals exist this is good feedback I think we can go to the last one and I just wanted to share one thing about this statement that a little sneaky maybe on our part but we we said outdoor parks and recreational spaces

and the reason we set it out like that is we brought up as a topic the need for indoor active spaces um so you know one thing like I think could be wonderful is the trail Junction Center could have tumbling mats for those really hot blistering hot days or for the snowy cold days so there's a lot of discussion now about how having recreational spaces that can deal with climate change and providing um those kinds of activities so that's why we said outdoor parks and then recreational spaces I just wanted to divulge that yeah that's true thanks alen okay uh last one here uh historic resources in 2050 the county will continue to celebrate its Heritage through the preservation and promotion of its historic landmarks and places so can I make an overall comment Stephen yeah I think bill and his team did a really nice job on this presentation and I'm going to be a little critical I think it's very difficult to create these vision statements because in my my mind they're not Visionary at all that's right they're they're more they're not novel they're more the county will cont I mean you can make each one of these the county will continue to or do more or we'll pay attention to things that we're already doing um I don't have a problem with that because I think where the rubber meets the road is where

the the goals and recommendations are going to be because if the goal like for historic resources the Count's going to commit money to do this and get this done by 2050 I I like that that's good there we go we have a plan now but these vision statements to me just kind of fall flat and it's not anyone's fault or problem because the County's doing a lot of this stuff already it's just where we are on the Continuum that in 2050 we want to be further along on this Continuum I'll give off my soap box now thank you Jonathan I wanted to just throw I want to I was quiet during the open space um um statement but I just want to throw out one thing that uh I I think we need to consider you know open space years ago we had um a tagline that said once it's gone it's gone forever well the reality is I was I learned over the years that's not true we will be called upon to regreen spaces as we move forward in Montgomery County as we become denser as communities Define themselves there's going to be a call for certain areas to regreen whether it's with Street trees whether it's taking um a failed industrial site and making it into a park those are possible Visions for the future and I don't think we can um I think it would be ill advised for us to not take that possibility for what the future of open space may be that's an interesting thing yeah because that also has to do with

the inclusion and diversity and access you know um so just let's not forget it put it in the um you know we call it in in the um the bike rack not the parking lot in the bike rack for a consideration later on you're um just in response to what you said Jonathan you're right they're kind of bland and overarching and sort of umbrella like and we did are a little scratching about of kind of starting with goals and recommendations and then tried to find a a statement that would kind of sit over that and Encompass what's behind it and we're not we're not telling you what all that scratching is you know and so you're left kind of like what does this mean it's safe it's very safe and that's what Jonathan is saying he doesn't want safe yeah I'm with Jonathan I want to be more I I I don't mind the safe vision statement I I I I want action items that push us forward to 2050 not not not more plan statements about we'll do more we'll try better or you know whatever it might be you're left hanging because there's the the goals and the recommendations aren't there to about to tell you so that's why I'm not saying statements are bad I think they're very difficult to put together um but but you know when the rubber meets the road is on the recommendation and action items yeah I understand that but I just once again I think the vision statement should set set out the tenor of the goals uh if I could jump in for a second I think there's there we're not done with these we we revisit these statements a lot and I think that there

is room for uh Bolder language but um Jonathan's right we are we are still putting together the the statements that follow and the the aspirational goals that that follow these broad statements and maybe maybe vision is the wrong word for what we're trying to do we need you know buckets to organize things in and for the moment these are the buckets yeah yeah you've hit on great you've hit on good points there's there's revision to take place here and we're going to talk through that so this this has been helpful this is why we're doing this it's helpful okay this is the last slide uh and then I'll unshare uh Ann or Chloe I don't know if you wanted to talk about these things we can mostly skip this as in we just wanted to let you know that this is a step in the process um we have one more sort of topic focused presentation that we're doing at the advisory committee and that will come here afterwards it's called people places and jobs um but that another piece of this process is after we talk with you we have a sta internal staff Workshop where we discuss the goals and recommendations and work on that so that's coming up for preservation and Recreation in early March and we're going to keep moving everything forward done um anything else on this thanks Bill thanks everybody Ellen Steve Donna really appreciate all the work not not our comments are not meant to be um dismissive of the work that's been put into I think the fact that you put the work in provided us with the ability or provided us with the the information to be able to uh make the comments and the

suggestions that we've that I think some of us were putting forth so yeah no really appreciate the feedback it's it's much appreciated okay next up is our MCO 2040 implementation grant program update and I got Ann Chloe and David I think David's gonna take the lead on this one so David's at least gonna yes I will uh I'll just open it up myself and share it one second so yes we are currently sorry I'll share my screen so used to teams um I almost have to get into into this could everyone see this or no nope nope okay great uh well I I can uh tell some jokes oh NOP never mind I was gonna here we go okay that space But go for it David so uh we are it's that time of year again we are currently accepting applications for the 2025 Grand cycle for our monco 2040 implementation Grand program and I are just going to give a brief update uh a little overview and then some status updates on current Grant projects that are still underway so going right into that um so a couple things new for this year mainly stemming from our County transportation program not being continued into into this here kind of slightly expanded our scope of our grant or the MCO 2040 grant program uh We've increased the budget from 2.5 million to 3 million and the walk and bike monco

Focus area is now transportation and Mobility so reflecting that that slightly widened scope of um possibly incorporating projects that were once you know um funded under or you know criteria under the County transportation program so those are the main changes um this year applications are due March 3rd so that's coming up quick uh as you know Municipal municipalities are the only eligible applicants they can partner with private or nonprofit organizations though or they can partner with other uh they can apply it with other municipalities for multi-municipal application grants are the minimum Grant award is $10,000 that can go up to $250,000 for individual applicants or $350,000 for multi-municipal projects most Grant Awards will require a 20% match uh open space projects require 50% there are we also have a a guideline where municipalities that make whose median household income is below 80% of the County's meean household income uh are eligible for a reduced match of 10% we currently have 16 municipalities this year that qualify for that reduced match uh they are listed in the guide book along with the income related information on that and of course projects have to be completed within 36 months of the award since the program's Inception of course this came out of the monu 240 comp plan um in 2016 since 2016 we've received 228 applic ations totaling $3 31.4 million in requests of that 140 grants have been awarded for

17.7 17.7 million in award money with the average Grant being a little over $126,000 so far 53 municipalities have received funding uh obviously as you can tell by the number of applications that's uh quite a few municipalities have received multiple um uh Grant Awards and we'll see that in the um the map in the next slide so yeah here is a distribution of all the grants that were awarded from 2016 through last year you can see there's several municipalities that have received as many as five to six grants during that time and we also currently have nine municipalities that are that have not received a grant yet um this doesn't necessarily mean that they have never applied but they have not had a grant yet we have received this year some inquiries from new Handover for a project and we understand that they do plan on applying so you know this we could very well see a first time municip a municipality get um get a grant awarded so that could certainly change and the focus categories so just a breakdown of how these play out each year um obviously our Focus categories are they optional criteria that an applicant can align their project with but they do it does mean they get priority in their evaluation the walk bik the walk and bike monco Focus category or I should say the formly walk and bike monco uh category has overwhelmingly been the most common Focus area that applicants have um centered their projects on $8.3 million in and this is out of all the awarded grants of of course this graph right here uh so that's been the most common

followed by adaptation and resiliency and then supporting downtowns uh those three really have been the um primary focus areas the throughout the duration of most of the program and now Ann is going to give us some status updates on uh current projects to underway okay uh in case you hadn't put two and two together um I am transferring the oversight of this Grand program over to David and Chloe uh so going forward they are the ones who are um taking in the applications and reviewing them and and lining them all up for you as Grant committee members potentially to to review going forward but I'm the one that has been overseeing it up until recently I'm the most familiar with the projects and what's been completed so I'm going to run through uh the projects that have been completed over the last year there are a lot and I see that we are running short on time sorry Scott I will I'll keep this as brief as possible all right so first up poram has a project dating back to 2019 uh for lighting in the business park uh next slide uh it looks like this they installed some nice new pedestrian scaled B uh lights in their business park um it's this took a while to to get all the pieces together to get all the fun together um but it is done and I thought it looked pretty good so I'm sharing some pictures here the only other outstanding project from 2019 is for some uh Storer management projects in sheltonham Township that has gone through a lot of revisions uh some scaling back um due to increasing costs uh it is not done yet but I hope that next year I'll be able to tell you that sheltonham has has installed these various um

improvements I believe that this is underway they have plans that have been drawn up that we've looked at they're just not there yet uh next slide 2020 grants so we've got uh yeah just pause here for a second we had one project that was withdrawn over the last year from this round uh an intersection realignment and Hatboro but we've got two projects that did wrap up uh next slide I'm going to mess this up wakam Miki Park um which honors the um Lenny lappi a Native American tribe that once had um ownership of this area I guess maybe ownership is not the right word but I think you know where I'm going with this but Collegeville installed a a new boat ramp an access point here to the perfum and Creek uh using funds from our grant program uh in partnership with the uh perum and Watershed Conservancy they are also in a separate project that is the Conservancy is installing um wayf finding signage for the for the water Trail that's here that's what you see on the bottom right um that signage installation is still underway and has not quite wrapped up yet but it is almost there um this took funds from both 20120 and 2022 but uh this was a nice project that got um a nice ribbon cutting ceremony over the summer next slide uh also getting funds from two different years of this funding program uh is the Bethlehem Pike pedestrian Improvement program uh people are taking notice because I got a call from someone in lower gwined yesterday asking if we could pay for a sidewalk installation in front of his house uh to which I said no but uh people are taking notice they the township took funds from

the program to install new sidewalks and pedestrian bridges on both sides of the road uh this is part of a much larger uh pedestrian Improvement project along Bethlehem Pike to make it more uh pedestrian and bicyclist friendly um and when Scott and I attended the ribbon cutting we got a visit by a a nearby um resident with a dog that's they said that they love walking through there so that was nice to see this already getting peti next all right 2021 uh all of these blue lines are projects that are completed from last year with one upper gwined that just is like wrapping up now so that's you'll see that in next year's presentation so we're going to just keep going Lansdale is first up with the Whites Road Park facilities Improvement next slide okay uh this was a project that underwent some revisions we provided funds for this Pavilion that was installed quite a while ago but also um this bathroom which was originally if you recall supposed to be a waterless bathroom we were intrigued by the idea of having a an environmentally friendly bathroom uh but then Lansdale decided and rightfully that having a a waterless bathroom could be challenging to clean the waterless bathroom um we're going to have water lines installed we approved that scope change but they're just waiting to acquire the funds to get everything installed properly but the bathroom has been purchased to be installed in the future but the project otherwise is done next slide uh lowu Township completed this dager road Penland Pike Trail Crossing you're looking at it here it is an

illuminated pedestrian Crossing through this trail system um what you can't see on the screen is that the trail Crossing leads to uh more sidewalks and a church behind me or behind where I was standing when I took this picture I guess um uh I thought this came out nicely it it is nice and easily seen by people who are driving through next slide uh pot toown it's got a couple of projects that wrapped up this year first up is the Memorial Park Bridge uh if you recall this was a bridge that was heavily damaged during a a storm event uh pushing I believe the this the bridge off of its uh pedestal holding so it was unusable and unsafe and the the easy way to get through the park was really impeded by this damaged Bridge so it was closed for several years this is the replacement it looks great um they had a nice ceremony that you can see here and um this this had completed a a good pathway through the park for not just the people who live in poptown but the variety of users that come to Memorial Park for things like their volleyball tournament and the C Brookdale Railroad and so on and so forth next skip back Township again another partnership project with the percum and Watershed Conservancy installed um this neat Stepping Stones project at Lenape Park I believe this is a fairly new park in the township but there if you can find your way to the Stepping Stones is kind of cool uh I did not fall in and uh I've managed to get across and back to take these pictures uh it is a nice little park with a uh disc golf course and some nice walking trails and the funds from the program went to install the Stepping Stones across the creek connecting into uh County Park assets as

well next okay Springfield Township completed the Walnut Avenue walkway project this is a multi-purpose pathway that runs along uh the side of the Sandy Hill Country Club between uh Orland Mill Road and Sandy Run Park uh there are some crosswalk improvements that were installed as well and gives uh people pedestrian access to some Township amenities and I believe there are we we did see an application from the township to continue this walkway under the uh sep R tracks that are adjacent but I'm not sure they're quite ready to move forward with that U we did not approve that part two phase for funds next Alber Morland Township completed this restoration project in Farmstead Park uh this is an Old Carriage House I believe it dates back to the 18th century and our funds went toward some pretty serious renovation work again uh increasing costs had to scale this project back a little bit but uh there's new roof and other woodwork that was installed on the carriage house it's used by um Township residents and um other organizations for meeting space um but it is not able it is not a year round facility but there's some nice craftsmanship that went into this historic preservation Mark next butpain Township is continuing with their uh Trail work this is the uh P Trail extension which which runs from Wentz road to the Wentz run uh Park Trail uh ultimately this is going to connecting to the route 202 Trail and the larger Township Network um this project had to be uh rethought a little

bit with the uh changing uh guidelines that Pico has for putting Trails through their um Power corridors But ultimately they were the township was able to see this through to completion all right moving on to projects from 2022 okay again lots of projects that are wrapping up and I'm going to jump right into this uh with Abington Township Abington had two projects kind of combined together for a safe Roots um application first project which is on the left is at Overlook Elementary School this allows for safe pedestrian Crossings for kids who are walking uh to the to the school uh this is on EDG Hill Road uh this one has been done for quite a while but the more recently completed project is on the right uh this is a new sidewalk installation along sasana Road at Ral Road uh adjacent to the Ral Park uh Senior Living Community uh this gives people easier access to the shopping that's around the corner as well as the nearby train station next is jenin Town burrow which wrapped up several projects this past year as well the first up is H oh I am not showing you the right pictures am I well you can imagine imagine that jenin town applied for an extension to their school zone um and this is not it so I'm sorry about that but um Jen toown has a a you know a one Elementary one middle one high school complex and um expanded their walk or they you know their school zoned a block but they have a a sizable population of people who walk to school

because there are no buses to their schools um so this project if I can send pictures later but it is you know to slow people down as they're driving around the school area next lale installed a bike and pedestrian movements at uh Stony Creek Park uh including the uh bike pump that you see on the upper left and the crosswalk that's here uh I stopped by this park on a random afternoon and it's really pleased honestly to see how active this park was there were people they're fishing which you see in the below picture so it's nice to see uh this park being so heavily used next fo down with another bridge at Riverfront Park this was a park Bridge Park stream Bank stabilization looks a lot like the other bridge I showed you but um pan is really pleased to be able to provide greater connectivity to their park assets and to the to the general population of people who are coming through the burrow uh on the Skool River Trail next slide Cisco Park um no commissioner De Bill did not actually go down the slide but that was too nice of a picture to not include uh we provided funds for basically everything but the playground upgrade but the playground is obviously the the main attraction here we provided for uh newly paved walking areas and uh benches and other amenties for the park um this was very popular uh when I was there um my child was there with me but there were lots of other kids there enjoying this park on a nice day next uh oper Marian um hopefully you all know that their linear Park along First Avenue is done we just provided it with a Montgomery award uh but this was

a a long time project so it's was nice to see this wrap up uh this provides um off-road use to um business park that is here along this Corridor there are new bus shelters that have been installed um new amenities like the ping pong table uh as well as uh Crossing signage and uh things of that nature I will uh we did some shuffling around of the money for the what we awarded to the township and the business improvement district which I will get you in a second um but we're going to keep going with upper Morland Township and the Warminster Road sidewalk installation this is just around the corner from Farmstead Park uh but this provided new sidewalk along this uh bridge that was being believe replaced U so there is now a new crosswalk there and sidewalks to give people a safe place to walk next uh West K hawen is in the midst of a lot of upgrades to Mackenzie Park um we provided funds for new sidewalks and trails that go through this property um but this is just one of many phases I believe of improvements that are planned next wh Pain's core connector Trail uh is the trail that I guess runs through the the township building property uh but we provided funds for uh Crossing upgrades and new walkways uh to get and I believe you can connect through here a to the uh the trail I was showing you previously um but this was um a nice upgrade that I was able to go check out recently next 2023 grants I'm almost done um keep going all right so this is what I was showing

you accidentally before Old York Road Traffic calming sorry about that mixup um this is uh like a lot of different mini projects all kind of wrapped into one to try to slow down traffic it's passing through Jenkin town uh as you're going through from Abington to cheltonham or vice versa um it's got pavement markings signage rumble strips uh a variety of things to try to slow people down as they are crossing through jenin toown bur next up ah pickle ball finally have a finished pickle ball project to show to all of you uh let me just say this was um a big to do in Upper Handover there were a lot of people who came out that I'm showing them to you in the in the upper left that were lined up and ready to play um this has I think been a popular addition to mobe Run Park um I've not been back since uh I do not have a pickle ball paddle yet but uh it was nice to see so much excitement about this new recreational amenity uh and then last so um this is again the um the First Avenue Corridor in in Upper Marian but um this is the the money the money that was allocated to Upper Marian in 2023 was reallocated back to that linear the First Avenue linear Park but then was not needed to complete the project they were able to I guess find some cost savings and they weren't touching their 2023 funds this is what they're proposing to do with those monies instead uh this is obviously a a rendering and not the finished product but I thought I would throw it in here to show you what is in the works this is I guess an an abandoned substation that the business approved district is is

hoping to transform into more of an art project an artistic piece uh so I'm looking forward to checking it out as it is being worked on so last slide March 3D I'm really looking forward to what David and Khloe have in store for this year's grants um I know I've talked to a couple of communities myself who are inquiring about projects so I hope we get uh the dynamic group of application we've been trying to push for and uh that's it great thanks and SC want move on to the director's report yes please thank you um I'm really going to limit it to two two things um but they're not insignificant uh one is is Staff news and I've got a quite a lot um actually uh in addition to obviously uh we'll be missing Matt Edmund um his last day is is in the office is Friday uh um but looking forward to working with him across the the the the imaginary line in somea or the river in some cases um we other announcements Tim stab is resigning March 4th uh is taking a job in South Bend Indiana to be closer to family we'll also miss Tim who's been very productive in his in his relatively short time here um but we will miss him as well Drew Shaw uh is retiring we're going to talk more about him in the future not till April um obviously he's one of our most longest tenur maybe second longest tenur person still in the office um I just realized look up the math uh not quite 40 years I've been saying 40 years if he stayed till September he'd hit the 40y year mark just just just saying um but no uh we are excited for him but also we'll miss him uh and we'll talk more about that later um other new I'll keep it there

for further out news um beyond that and I want to go to our newest planners on staff I think they're with us today uh Jeff vaugh is the new assistant design section manager he's a registered landscape architect with 28 years of experience in the private sector uh formerly with Clark Kon and hint um and BR Jeff's I think in the room say hi okay I'm good nice to meet you Jeff hi nice to meet you I'm looking forward to I grew up in Montgomery County went to PV uh graduated from there and I'm looking forward to doing a lot of good work here got where uh shville where Shanksville right behind Rolland tur great welcome and our other newest member is a transportation planner Austin Davis uh he comes to us from a regional planning organization in Northern Massachusetts but uh and before that worked in Portland Maine uh and went to Cornell but he has connections and family in South Philadelphia uh so I think this is a little bit of a return to some of his roots is a I think is online yep H uh hello from Snowy South Philadelphia um uh I wanted to make it up there today but uh weather kind of didn't kind of didn't permit it um I'm really happy to uh join this position um I or join mcpc rather in this position um I'm originally from Virginia but I have a lot of Philadelphia routs um both in South Philadelphia and uh in uh Burlington and Mercer counties in in uh New Jersey I also went to Temple um so for me Philadelphia's home and um I'm I'm really happy to um to to join and I'm uh I'll be happy to meet you all in uh in person eventually meet you good

luck welcome luck finding a parking space for ready thanks Austin all right um continuing uh with staff we had uh four promotions last in January that I don't think I had a chance to highlight at this meeting uh Robert cardier is now our senior GIS cartographer uh going from GIS cartographer uh Khloe Mo Moore is now uh principal County planner 2 John Lusher is now an assistant environmental planning section manager 2 he was still assistant section manager one before that and Anna stated Summers is a principal graphic and digital designer to uh that one I just point out um she was a principal graphic designer to uh prior to this but her uh job role is expanded to include digital design which is actually something she's been doing for a little while now but uh we wanted to formally recognize that while still maintaining her graphic design uh value and and and work for us uh the in in in in uh improving or expanding no of GIS and online digital products uh we really appreciate her uh being able to help us make the not only with the uh uh I don't know detailed aspects of creating those types of products but making them uh look good and be have better user interface and and consistency uh she'll be helping with that uh okay and we have uh so one opening officially right now the trails in open space base planner as vacated by Brian EK last month uh that is opening and Bill's uh currently uh initiating uh interviews for that uh with Matt's departure there'll be a little bit of reorganization here at the top so that's

not nothing to announce as of yet um and uh further movement uh is this will be an a good year for for restructuring resetting uh opportunity as well as loss but uh we're we're I'm looking forward to a uh coming out of it as strong as before and uh Matt and I I apologize if I'm overstepping here but I know Matt's I won't unfortunately won't be available but he's uh inviting it uh people to come for a happy hour on Friday from 5: to S I think um if if that's okay Matt I I'm mentioning it now I'm sure he'd uh love to see anyone who's interested in in stopping by it's at puddlers in Bridgeport um and again we're same place we have our holiday party um upstairs same same spot so you guys are welcome to come I'm actually taking my wife out for dinner for Valentine's Day I know Eagles prayed in Valentine's fall on this for most people it's okay I recognize it get some extra chocolates there for Matt you just enjoy that um and then let's see uh I I think that's it for staff news oh no final staff news back to Drew Drew Shaw uh Drew is being recognized tonight as a watershed Champion uh this is a there's an event in Abington I think it's at the Abington club uh hosted by the uh a group uh called the U uh Upstream Suburban Philadelphia Watershed collaborative or USP uh they are uh I think quarterbacked by the Pennsylvania environmental Council and they wanted to recognize Drew's role in the whisten Clean Water partnership over the years certainly well well earned and deserved so uh happy that he's being recognized I know Patty will be out there as well uh

supporting him so uh moving to my last item is just want to update you on a few on the commiss County Commissioners um Tuesday of next week there is what is going building into a high-profile uh stateof the county address it will be at the community college at 10:00 a.m. um we I think the email was recirculated you may have gotten it previously we definitely recirculated it yesterday uh if they do ask for registration if you want to appear but if you went to the in uh inauguration of the new Commissioners last year it's I think a similar venue large Auditorium and they're looking to announce a lot of not only reflect on some of the achievements of their first year but also highlight some of the uh initiatives and goals for for the county and the in the year ahead uh so I think it's going to be a fairly substantive announcement um of course we've been feeding our information to them and hopefully some of our programs will will get some uh uh mentioned and uh to that end we uh are now sitting at what is essentially called uh the chair of the commissioner's PRI weekly priorities meeting to address uh enacting some of these initiatives and keeping things moving uh we were not currently at this T at this table before for so I think that's a very big positive uh and pat patty joins me for that uh on a weekly basis and we're having both seeing uh some of the top level decision- making and and action but also participating in that and promoting uh our own activities that can go into it as well as helping to guide Commissioners on an important policy issues and opportunities uh so that's uh all I mentioned uh stay tuned you might hear uh well that's all I'll mention uh that's all I got thank

you any uh before we adjourn any party comments from board members just doy Jonathan ni s everybody drive drive carefully before we adjourn I just wanted to uh pass along my appreciation for all the work that Matt's done for the county and the Planning Commission and personally I'll miss work with you and I miss the important the important contribution you have continued to provide to the county and especially to the board um so I think you'll definitely be missed and I wish you all the best in your Endeavor down in Chester County so um any else okay returns and see everybody next month or some event getting on Valentine's Day your wife be maybe sell that one a weekend come on you can go Saturday night you can you can bring you can bring your family F I am probably bringing my family to Matt pars I'm bringing my husband sure there's no way my wife is coming not miss shot in Hell of that happening all right hey honey let's go SP let's go spend happy hour at Matt's going away party for Valentine's Day she like who what exactly so yeah yeah but um anyhow well everybody have a good good month and a good Valentine's Day and I think that's it Ste do you want me to jump on the phone real quick yeah give me a call okay