Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

My partner might have It's interesting because I wonder Yeah.

Good morning everyone. I'd like to call to order the Montgomery County Planning Commission meeting for Wednesday, April 8th, 2026. Uh let the record show that we have a uh full board. Uh we have six members in the in the room and we have three online. Um so with that, I'll take any board comments before we get started. Any board comments from those in the room? Any board comments online? So, I will just say that I want to wish everybody a happy Easter and happy Passover, which is over tonight. I get my cheese steak tonight.

Happy about that from where Josh doesn't get his cheese steak. Oh, no. He doesn't get his cheese steak. Where you going to get it from? He said, "Where you going to get a ski steak?" Yeah, you gota goes like what's that? Dallas is good, too. But that's about 5 minutes. That's about 5 minutes from my daughter's house and I would feel the vortex of having to go see her. Avoid that. A lot of pressure, but then there's always questions about things that she needs like avoid. We'll stay away from that.

Be glad that you'll need that. Um, I'll take a motion to approve the board meeting minutes for March 11th, 2026. So moved. Move. Is there a second? Second. Been moved and second or any comments or corrections on the meeting minutes? They look so formal in the new I'm getting used to them. Any other comments besides aesthetics? Seeing none, all those in favor to approve the minutes say I.

I. Any opposed? Okay, we have any public comment or staff comment of staff here? Anybody? Hi. Then with that then we will move on to our first order of business which is school district enrollment projection study and a call on an morning.

Pass over to you. Uh, I'll make this quick. Needed some more to do. So, county planning section, as some of you know, does these school district enrollment reports periodically for a variety of school districts here in the county. Uh we have been contacted by both Upper Dublin School District and the Lower Marian School District to do an enrollment projection report for these districts in the fall once their fall enrollment numbers are uh finalized. So um for Upper Dublin, this will be our first report for them in quite some time. Um, it will be for a total cost of $14,76 with a uh 75% 25% cost split. Upper Dublin cost with that discount comes to $10,557. Uh, Lower Marian did a report with us about three years ago. I think I talked about this briefly at our last board meeting. Their total cost will be $12,800 with a 75% cost share of 9,600.

So before we get started on any qu comments or questions from board members, I'm going to get the resolution. So before us, we have MCPC resolution 26-4.1 short-term contract resolution of April 8, 2026. And as Andy said, there contracts on here number 205, which is up for Dublin School District. um contract length is from October 1st to December 31st of 2026 and the values that Ann had already spoken about. And then we also have contract two um 707 Lower Mar lower Marian School District their contract uh dates are September 1st to November 30th, 2026. And once again, the values that she spoke about, just to comment on the values that were in the original uh agenda, um were slightly off the lower marine is 12,800 total cost uh as opposed to what was in the original, which was 12,694. Um so anyhow, with that, is there a motion to approve the resolution? So move. Is there a second?

Second. Second. Any comments or questions from board members? Just a really quick one. Do we where you have a repeat client? Do we ever go backwards and look at how uh our projections compared against reality?

Uh we do uh we usually take a look at our prior work and the the trajectory of what we thought would happen versus what has actually happened. Um we we aren't always the ones to do the studies as well. So we'll look at other studies that have been done by other consultants. Um it's a mixed bag. I think that generally I was going to say generally our our predictions are pretty good but we're also using a very limited number of inputs and things happen all the time that we're just caught off guard by like uh pandemics for example. Uh so you know those are factors that we are really hard to quantify.

I was going to say yeah pandemic but so that in those years as far as tracing those things um and I also wanted to add as part of the county expanding um the performance measures I think formerly called keep KPIs or keep performance indicators. This is one of them that we're boosting up to have a more substantive tracking system specifically around the school reports or around Okay. And it did mention that um something about uh Laurian go to full day kindergarten and that was that in response to what we said the projections were. I mean it was mentioned and I was wondering what the connection was.

The full day kindergarten I think was a long-term desire of the school district. Most I think almost all districts now in the county have full day kindergarten with possibly Springford being the only one that does not have it and they're shifting to a full day kindergarten model as well. Um it was not our spring. Yeah. I I don't think it was a result of our projections more so community's desire to stop paying for daycare. Uh, do our do our school districts do extended day?

Yeah. Um, I think all of them have some sort of before and afterare availability or partnerships with area organizations that provide that kind of service. Any other questions or comments for Ann? With that, all those in favor say I. Any opposed? Thanks. Thank you. Next up on our just on our agenda is our median median housing prices for 2025 reporting David. Good morning David. How are you? I'm good. See you. How are you?

How's everyone? Morning board staff members. Um so I saw it on on it. I saw the report that you gave us online to look at. Is it printed out for us any place or no? We just have to print it ourselves. Yeah, we didn't print it for printers anymore. I know. No, no. I just like when you're talking about it, I'd like to often I know I can pull it up online. We can get one printed right now if you like. Sure. Yeah, are you able to? I'm sorry. It's fine. No, I like to have them at my fingertips rather than go back in.

Would anyone like else like a copy? I'm the only Okay, we're analog people in the digital world. I know. I get it. Well, I got it. What? That sounds pretty close to a song. You know, I just got a got up to the 20th century and we're into the 21st. My husband's in the 19th. Okay.

Oh, the Yes, that's right. Should we wait or should we sell?

All right, good to go. Okay, so uh it's that time of year again for our housing price report. Uh so we have a couple things to go through. We've changed, we've expanded the report a little bit and we have a um a cool initiative that we've been working on that uh will also change the way we look at the data a little bit. Um so traditionally this report went over the median home sale prices, you know, for uh individual units, individual owner occupied units, uh the new and existing by type total sale, the total sales of those units, inflation and interest rates. But, you know, with especially with affordability issues becoming more and more prominent, we're really delving into, as we'll see in our next presentation, we're delving into uh housing issues. So, we've expanded some of the metrics that we are offering on the report. So, if you'll not if you noticed, it was a little bit longer than usual because we've added some some uh measurements that we think are some numbers that we think are valuable to consider and understand. So, active listings, inventory, uh the median number of days of a given units on the housing market as well as homeowner and renter costs and the percent of of those who are cost burdened. Uh so that's kind of gives us a little more well-rounded more of a broader sort of you know housing price report beyond just the traditional home sale prices. But getting into the home sale prices off the bat. So, in 2025, the overall median home sale price for a house in McGomery County was $485,000. That's a 6.1% increase from the previous year. Single family detached homes were at just under 570,000. Single family attached was uh 5 40,000. Multifamily, which um typically is, you know, just individual condo units, so not whole developments, um 292,000.

they saw a jump a little bit more of a jump than um the other types uh going up by 12 12.3%. Then we also of course break it down by new and existing units. New units of course are a little more more expensive uh with new construction and also uh the overall cost for a new unit was a little over $718,000. Single family detach homes were 950,000. single family attached was uh 580,000 $648. So um you know tight tight housing market as it's often the case multif family is is not um usually those are existing units. Most of what's being built for multif family is um apartment rentals. Uh and existing units overall $460,000 for an existing unit in the county. uh 550,000 for detached, 380,000 for uh attached and 292,000 for uh condos. And so, you know, obviously these are concerning numbers. We don't It's a It's a tight It's a It's a

Yeah, it's a very very uh tight housing market. Um and as you'll see here, just to kind of give a broad overview of municipalities. So, um, we've had we have five municipalities that, uh, whose median home sale prices topped 700,000 this year. Lower some of them are what two you've traditionally seen, lower Marion, and Narworth at um, you know, 897,000, 750,000 respectively. And then rounding out the bottom five was Red Hill, West Pots Grove, Norristown, East Greenville, Pottstown. So, we had three that were um Nortown, East, three that had median home sale prices below 300,000, but um so yeah, it's been going up and up. And just to kind of give some perspective on the number of home sales, you'll see I think a little bit of this in the next presentation, but you know, with um interest rates still being high, you've got and high demand, smaller smaller supply, you've seen basically right around just making sure it's turnable on the side. If you smack the screen, it'll work.

That's what I've traditionally. Yeah. So, you know, um right around 2023 to 2025, that's when we saw that drop with the the interest rates rose. So, you're just not seeing as many um homes being sold. So, it's it's big drop from 22 to 23, but it's kind of leveled out. So, it's you pretty much stay around the 9500 mark, 9,500 uh mark for total home sales. um multif family force can be doesn't you know it's a little bit more var not variable but it's so doesn't quite follow that pattern but you know the bulk of your home pipes are follow that pattern just kind of leveling out at the current levels that they've been at for the last couple of years

and David just to clarify the multif family is only condos

that's right that's right um so uh the median number of days on the market so this is um some resources from the federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. It measures the just for clarity, it's the median number of days that a uh on the market for listings in the county is kind of aggregated together for the year. So basically any um you know the given number of days that you would um have a house on the market. So that was as you can see it's dropped really significantly since 2018. So for 2025 uh median number of days that a listing is on the market was 38 days. Uh and these are measured from the way the realer.com measures it is you know from um the listing date to closing. So it's that seems like obviously there's homes that are on the market for much less than that. Um but it kind of falls it's pretty much bar for the course at least the collar counties um you know Bucks counties 41 um Chester Dunler around the same 38 days um and they all follow the same pattern since pre-COVID numbers they've dropped significantly in terms of the number of days. So you know these homes are being the homes that are going on sale are being snatched up even quicker than they were before. So that makes it even more competitive and the number of active listings on the market. This is um the uh the number of active listings in a given month that's aggregated for that entire year as an average. Uh so you can see obviously much less than it's kind of a broad pattern but much less than what we see in the pre-COVID years. Uh but it's kind of it's has leveled out and even increased a little bit. Um so currently this the average like active listings for the year is 982. um active list active in

active listings for the entire year or is that active listings at the end?

It's it's an average like in a given month there was like that average in there. Yeah. So I should have put aggregated down there, but that doesn't sound very uh you know friendly to the to hear I guess but yeah it's an um average time and so slight increase but still much less um than what we've been you know what people have to choose from in comparatively years. So, just an overview, you know, as home prices continue to to um escalate, you know, um it's yeah, creating a a squeeze really. So, you high interest rates, uh high demand, low supply, um you know, these the few homes, like I said, that are being put on a sale, you know, being on sale are are being taken up very quickly. And that's also driving up prices. It's also um you know people who want to buy are having to continue renting which has implications for the rental market. So um according to ACS uh the median gross rent in the county in 2024 was uh $1683. It's up from um just under $1,300 in 2019 ACS. Uh nearly 30% of Monaco households are renter occupied. So, you know, we do have a significant fairly significant renter occupied population. Uh 40% 46% of renters in the county are cost burdened. So, they pay 30% or more of their renter costs um or their income to to uh renter costs each month. And that varies widely within the municipalities. We have some municipalities that pay you know the average you know certain number of households pay 50% of their of their income towards so so you know just the reason for you know expanding this

report was to just show kind of the ripple effects of how it's affecting affordability all around in the county as well. And so in addition to expanding the report, we've also we're working on uh ways that uh we can expand how we look at the data for this as well. And this is something that ultimately will be applied to our other reports to our housing units built as of course you know we do our housing units proposed non-residential proposed but thank you. So, we've been working uh for a while on a dashboard through this is through PowerBI and um this is this is the these are the median um home sale reports in dashboard form that will eventually go on our website for for public use and be valuable for um Montgomery County residents um and also internal staff too and really provides a you know intuitive uh easy you know pretty seamless way of looking at the data and also kind of interactive. So you can see this is the these cards up here represent the number of total sales uh for the whole county and you can filter by a number of different criteria. You can filter by the the year um this year and last year and of course by municipality and then by housing type. So there's a number of it's a you know very uh pretty comprehensive interface here. So we can just go and this is something that we'll build on each year from you know going forward.

TBED we're currently working on it. We have some we're working on some um data tweaks too. We have some we're still geocoding some addresses in here. So it's you know just a bart for Stephen. I mean this year next year. Oh I mean we're looking at Yeah. It's not going to be new. It'll be this year. Yeah, it'll be next. Yeah. Few months. So, um but yeah, we're just kind of working on the the the weeks for this here for the median housing sales. Who would use that?

Sorry. Who would use it? It would be well so anyone who is looking to see you know well if you're in the market for a house or if you want to know or if you're interested in what's going on you know what what the homes are going for in your community and um and um you know given municipality uh it would be I think something valuable for people in the market for a home just to easily know what is going on by housing type. Um, so it would be residents ideally and also I think staff too. We would certainly we would certainly use it as well. It um we still have the reports but it would be um it would be just kind of an easy way to also just give it the spatial aspect of um of all these numbers as well.

Municipal officials I think it's good information for them decision making. Sure. Absolutely. Um but yeah, I can so you know I can click on just to give an example I can um on you know 2025. So that's going to give me median home sales by municipality for that year and the total sales uh along the top. And if I click on, you know, say Whitpane Township, so it's going to actually zoom in to Whitpane Township and give me all of the plane types that um that were sold in 2025. And I can even, you know, I can sort by housing type as well within the municipality. So you can have a lot of filters on at once and it can zoom to uh the the lot level and then you can also hover over you know which each should be going. Yeah. So each um each property you know you can hover over it'll give you the housing type and the the home sale price for that particular address and it gives you a range of the the prices that they went for as well. So that's that's valuable too. Um just something that we've been working heavily with GIS, our GIS team on John Stinker in particular, he's put incredible work into this because really it's it's a lot of complex data that's going into this and we're having to format it in a way that is um both easy to read but also easy ensures an easy update um as we update it each year. Is there and if it's too tough to tackle at this stage maybe just down the road sorting instead of by municipality by school district. I think a lot of people follow the data or choose where to live based more on on the school district and its quality versus the the actual municipality.

So that's certainly something to something consider. Yeah. I don't mean to be critical. looks like an or maybe at least when you look at the individual points have the ability to see what school district it's in. You know there there are probably a few different ways that could be capt like overlaying um yeah either filtering by that or at least having overlay on the map. Sure. Right. Having it as a data point. Absolutely. David, so this this you can't get in here and see the multifamily units that are rental. Can you see that? Yeah, you can't see that. Not the rentals. No sales.

Because what I'm trying to figure and I'm not quite sure what I'm is that we've had so much multif family built and that will impact communities on who's moving in and the level and and the cost of those rentals. Um, and just the impact on communities of having what I keep hearing is that a lot of the rentals are fairly high high expense levels. what that's going to do to our communities having a lot of rental housing in does it have impacts on schools or we we had always thought that they were going to be more empty nesters or you know and I don't and I think we're finding out that there are if they're larger units a lot more kids in those rentals so somehow there needs to be some understanding of where they are if there's so many of them and how many people are moving into them.

Absolutely. So that would also be, you know, when we get to as we work through this, we would um that would certainly be reflected in like the housing units build version of this, you know, that would show that um just in a different place. But I I'm just wondering, you know, because it's been so those numbers have been so high for I don't know 10 years. Is that

Yeah, if I could comment on that. Um so our our the report we released last year was the characteristics of new housing which get g gets it a lot of that data. Um that's not an annual report so it it it doesn't get updated. Our school school district studies are really an opportunity to look in the window of a specific area and that is immensely helpful um to you know when it uh jives with that with an area that we're seeing that activity which it often does. Um, but I would say we're still at the point where we're not seeing a lot of families move into these multif family buildings the way they're constructed, right?

Um, the home ownership rate of the county is still around 71% I think. Um, might have dropped a percentage point or two in the last decade or two. Um, but still we are a majority home ownership county, right? Um, so I I think those are val definitely valid points and and we we have some already available to address continue to, but I also think um we're would overstate it at this point. Overstate. I I wouldn't overstate it. No, I'm I'm just cur I'm curious and I don't know specific what I'm curious about, but I know that it's going to it's impactful in some way and I'm

I'm wondering what we should be doing to think about it. You're saying we are thinking about it. We're just not quite sure how It depends on the area of course by the activities. Yeah, it varies by point. The more interesting part is not whether there's more people moving into rentals as Scott was saying it hasn't changed substantively. However, the cost of rentals has gone up.

And there's less options because getting a mortgage one, interest rates are higher and housing costs are higher, but getting a mortgage is difficult, which is why you started seeing people gravitate more towards rentals, but rentals are higher and there's not a lot not enough supply than that. Well, we have seen that trend, but there's fewer home households with mortgage in town. then the percentage of households with a mortgage come down.

And there's also this this trend of institutional purchasing of single family homes which is not necessarily going to be picked up in some some fashion because those homes will be used in rental but not nec they will necessarily show up. Yeah.

Things to consider. But yeah, this is kind of a this is kind of our meeting housing sales is kind of our first foray into the dashboard world. So this is you know on its on its way and this is just part of what we need to um yeah that's all any other questions any other questions for Dave and move on. Thanks Davis. Sure. Your last get an update on when that when that link or when that information will be on available online

when you have a better understanding to a whole new school website. Um, so I think that we can certainly post a link to this on the current website, but uh it is a big process to transition all of the information on our current page to your computer site where everything has to be done slightly differently. Uh, but I do think that this dashboard is nearly ready to go. just a matter of figuring out how we can best incorporate these into the community.

Whenever we figure out whether it will go live, I think some board would like to know that. Absolutely. Thank you very much. Next up is housing attainability update on county initiatives. These two are linked, aren't they? So, we got Ken, Scott, Patty, and Claire. And friends, it's spring now, right?

Put that up. Uh, I'm going to kick us off here. Um, but it play a pretty small role throughout. Um, and I want to upfront um just address something uh uh real quick. Uh I've had a host of medical issues over the last uh five days. Um and just got out of the yard yesterday. Um I have a long story. Um and if I I may get pulled away at any point for some phone calls. So I apologize for that. Um but me mentally everything's fine. Um, I hope as fine as it ever was. And I just want to first say up front that the amazing team, uh, you know, just the uncertainty of the last few days has been great. They they already had the bulk of this in their their baskets anyway, but um, really want to appreciate their ability to step up and and cover for my uncertainty. So, thank you guys. And I think you're still you're going to get a great presentation today and discussion really help. So, um, so leading off and after this, I'm just gonna sit down just not to alarm anyone, but just, uh, leading off though, this is, u,, uh, an effort we wanted to do, to bring it to the board. Uh, there's a lot of stuff that's been happening with the county over the past year, and we're gearing up towards a more significant announcement of some of that activity, uh, to the public through the commissioner's office as they have, this is certainly one of their priorities. uh and a cross departmental team has been in uh in action like I said really over the last year um stemming from two years ago when when Commissioner Winder hosted a a big forum and event for the uh countywide officials municipalities um anyone that's around for that. Um but this is all kind of ongoing and still addressing the problem which will has not gone away unfortunately and probably will not it needs activity. So go to the next slide. Um last part of this introduction is to give you an overview or I have it. Sorry.

Um this is a little ven diagram. Um and we we'll probably we'll provide this PowerPoint. I think it'd be useful for you to have um Oh yeah, this you do have. You're right. You may want to follow along. Yeah, let's keep track of it. of his impact.

Yeah, this was an effort to to kind of put all the little programs and initiatives starting with what's currently happening or what we've been working on. I say we the county um about half of these as you see are uh MCPC based programs and things, but there's some important things coming out of our office of housing community development primarily and uh and also policy office. So, this is just kind of way to put, you know, what we what we've been doing, what's in progress and still going and some of the things I identified for future initiatives. And we're going to talk about most of these um throughout this presentation to give you more update, but this is just a good framing for it. We're also going to talk a little bit about the state housing plan, which was released last month uh and and the impact of that on on us and what the state is saying. And uh and then through the second half of the presentation, we're also going to do a deep deeper dive into one particular project along the vein of what we we generally try to do, which is bring projects to you earlier on to get your input and feedback. And that's on our missing uh one of the things is to figure out what to call it, but our housing guide book and uh uh addressing middle density and missing missing middle type housing. Um and updating our series from way back in 2007 on workforce housing, which plays into that as well. So, that's what you're going to see. And I just want to set the stage for that. And I'll pass it to uh who's next?

Andy.

So, some quick thoughts for all of you on the housing market. Uh, thank you to David for kind of kicking this off and talking about um what our housing uh costs look like currently. Um, this is not a new a new topic. We've been talking about we talk about this every month, right? But it's not new. Um, but the the county's housing market is really a reflection of of larger national trends. Um, we we have a nation where housing prices continue to increase faster than wages. Although, let me just say I saw the the news item in yesterday about how more and more people are in the upper middle class. I don't believe it.

I don't believe it at all. Right. When when I looked at the the income brackets that they assigned to upper middle class households, it went from just over $100,000 to somewhere in the mid $300,000.

A vast ocean of people. Um, and I don't think that someone who makes $100,000 would consider themselves to be upper middle class. But that aside, um our w our wages are not keeping pace with how much things cost. And the more people spend on housing uh means there is less money for other things that people need. Uh school costs and college tuition and health care and transportation. And it's it's an impossible dilemma to be in. And uh David already mentioned that our our renters and homeowners are increasingly cost burdened. Um but what's that?

Not increasingly. I mean I just sorry it's we can talk about it later but the data doesn't a higher percentage of renters and homeworkers are not costing opportunities percentage wise.

Okay. Um, in any case, the the price increases that that you know we present to you. At the same time, it's it's disheartening to see that people are paying more and more towards housing, but it also reflects the fact that county is a desirable place to live. Um, um, but it is challenging for people who don't make that much money to live here. Uh this is a graphic from the u national low-income housing coalition about um how many house renter housing units there are for uh lowincome renter households. If you are at around the area median income, that's that top bar. There are 102 housing units for those um 100 renter households. But if you, you know, clearly if you make less money, those housing units start to disappear. There's a vast uh mismatch between affordability and supply.

And that's based on that 30% ratio. Yes. If that if you are, you know, to pay less than 30% of your income. Yes. It's household income.

Household. Um, so like I said, this is not a new a new issue. We have been seeing housing prices climb for a very long time. Uh, David showed you the most recent numbers, but this this is a trend that has been going on for a long time. We we were concerned back when we wrote those reports in 2007, right? That's we saw this and we were concerned, but it's only kept going from there. Uh and so at the time of our 2007 report, we had a very hard time attracting interest in the topic. We brought those reports out to municipalities and no one really wanted to talk to us about it. Um you know, increasing housing prices at that time were seen as a sign of economic success and desiraability. Um times have changed. Um everyone everyone wants to talk about them now. uh people who live here want to talk about it, municipal officials want to talk about it. So that is I guess good that we are able to have this conversation.

And one of the issues I think has been since that 2007 conversation is the face of the people who are challenged. We people who aren't thinking about this have perceptions of who's challenged till they see that it's their um their son who just graduated from planning school or that it's um a a LPN nurse or it's the ambulance driver or it's who the people are. they they just don't understand the breadth of people who are important to have in your community who are challenged. So if it's a number, it's one thing, but if it's somebody you know or somebody you interact with, it's really very different. So I think we have to keep that in mind as we discuss this not here today, but as we discuss it as a county.

Uh I absolutely agree. Uh, with that, I'm going to shift gears a little bit. Um, county definitely wants to contribute to a solution even though we have a very small role in the housing development process. And Claire is going to talk a little bit, well, we're all going to talk a little bit about what we're currently working on. Um, but she's going to start. Yes. Where's the phone? the order of science.

Good morning. Um I'm here to talk about the community planning assistance contract and how the community planners are playing one role in um addressing the county level work. So through the community con the contracts that we have with our communities we are trying to promote good planning for housing related issues um and that can involve a whole host of different things. We work with communities on full zoning updates um miscellaneous zoning update that they come in through the communities and we also work with communities on comprehensive plans and larger planning projects. And through each of these different planning processes, we try to promote um diverse housing types and housing that is appropriate in certain areas depending on the context of the community. Um we also work with communities on other miscellaneous planning things as they occur. Um such as the recent Narbirth openhouse that was um specifically addressing affordable housing in Narbirth. Um, we've helped with help to support communities when they have different developments coming in such as the affordable housing proposal that was in Upper Gwyn Township. Um, and as communities see more development, we're there to help them understand the context that they're developing in. And one of those is with transit oriented development. Um, so as you probably remember in 2021, we came out with the Montgomery County um, published released the uh, TOD model ordinance and guide book. Um, and as part of that, we have been continuously working with communities to promote TOD in their communities. Some of that through zoning work and additional planning. Um, and as part of the ongoing implementation of that plan, Montgomery County produced five different stationary walking tour brochures that are online and available

to view now. Um, and we are continuing to assess ways to implement that the the planning principles that were in that model ordinance. Um, part of that is working with different municipalities to plan for TOD in around their stations. And, um, currently we're working with or we're planning to, um, to find ways to do ongoing outreach with communities that in specific areas that have um, station, but it's an ongoing project that that we're continuing to work on. How those discussions going?

Uh, depends on the community, but generally good. We have um currently you probably have been aware of the proposal that's happening um in Amler that was really SEPTA driven but we have been working with Amler and with SEPTA to um amend their zoning and kind of work with the community to to facilitate those conversations. But you go into these townships and most townships, especially on the list that you showed, are townships that probably have densities that are certainly not within the realm of trying to find more housing, more housing diversity. So, I'm interested in those conversations. Like, do you find that they're receptive? Do you find that they're skeptical or they're And and I have one other part of my question.

Steve, those municipalities are built out already. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, most of them we have they have older ordinances that you know have densities that were probably more acceptable and there were different types of board mentalities. That's a great question. I'm just ask one other question then then I'll shut up. My other part of the question is in those conversations, do do you find um u more acceptance of higher density or different density and different types of housing uses housing stock as when the board is newer or older?

Okay. So, the first part of your question I think we're going to address a little bit more in this presentation. there's a lot of stuff that we have ahead of us. And uh the second part I think we should also hold into the bigger conversation because there's a there's a lot that we have to cover in this section. So um I appreciate that. I'll write that down, but I'm going to put a little pin in for later if that's because I'm tending to see some of these changes occurring when boards are changing. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, you jump in. I was gonna cover it during the second

previous slide to just uh finish off this slide and a little bit we'll put a pin but also a little bit I had was going to speak to that nature. Um this um our our county commissioners are interested in this issue. Commissioner Mckija especially um often cites in in some of the new news interviews he does um about the importance of to he has gravitated towards that um and has asked us to support and look into different things along those lines. So I want to touch on the fact um we've gone different directions with this and and it's been a process but where we kind of landed right now is we have a cross departmental team the planning is kind of kicking off because we do so much of this um of looking at specific station areas and we've narrowed it down to about 17 um of the really kind of primary but different scales not all the biggest but different scales where we think if we're to make any kind of headway or opportunity towards housing supply in these areas, which is a goal, a strategy. Um, these are the ones to to focus on. So, um, what we're what we're in process right now is assembling a little bit of a database, if you will, or collection of information, looking at a few key things at each station area, including what's the background existing situation, what's been happening there in terms of housing development. Um, looking at the local scene and officials, what is their attitudes toward this? uh is that changing, you know, even down to, you know, who who might be advocating now, just kind of getting a lay of the land and also helping the commissioners know about this, too, because they they have their own channels and independent conversations um and and we're glad that they uh have this issue uh in the forefront. Uh and then we also are looking at um any major needs that might be facing that community that we're aware of. Um, I've termed it in some cases triggers that might be opening to, okay, if we're going to talk about density or any increase in density, what

are the obstacles to making that a tolerable conversation, which we know is an issue depending who you're talking to and where. And sometimes there are definite things out there that, oh well, if we only had this or if we had another parking garage that would make it better. We want to know about that. The future is untold. There could be in in Mija's words scaling up. you know, if he wants to pursue additional funding resources um to help these communities specifically towards these goals, um that's something that, you know, could come out of this. Um but that's above our what we do.

Uh and then finally also um uh even identifying any known targeted opportunities or you know places that are have been talked about redevelopment which is usually what we're talking about in these in these cases. So all of that is kind of being assembled now as an more internally and also like I said it's cross departmental policy commerce and external affairs also have you know insight and lines into some of these things and uh we all want to combine our our knowledge and and give the county kind of united front at least in terms of understanding what's going on and what what opportunities really are there because you know politically speaking you know commissioner can come in and say wants to do this this and this. um we're there to say, "Okay, they've been doing this, this, and this. Here's what they think." And it's all, you know, hopefully a better team effort. We can ultimately get better results. And we talk about it all the time that we'd like to see what's in our comp plan. The goals are there, strategies. When we're in the community and we have the opportunity, we we press it. Um but you don't always have that. So, this is a way of just expanding that. Um so, that's happening now and and that'll continue. Um and that's Claire, I understand that the transitoriented development will increase the housing stock affordability, attainability or I mean is can we equate that with transitori development or is this like highric apartments for folks who like to commute to the city on good paying jobs and this is none of the above where they are in life. there are a lot of big factors at play in your question. Um I also want to put a pin in that because we we are going to be addressing a lot of these these things later on this presentation and we have something that we're going to share board and everyone um later on in this presentation

the keys to get out all the questions and then they answer later on. There is a midpoint in this presentation for for talking and there's another one at the end. We're just not going to get there. Exactly. Ask a question they're going to answer later. I forgot to put the tape over everyone.

Okay. So, um I just wanted to briefly mention that our assistance to communities is not just limited to the ones that we have community planning contracts with. We do offer zoning audits to any community that's interested in a little bit of an assessment on what changes could be made locally to encourage more construction affordability. Um it's it's a memo. Um it is not necessarily anything that um gets enacted immediately, but it is some initial thoughts and starting point. We've done a handful of these audits. We'd be happy to do more of them if communities want to take us up on this offer. Um we finished audits for Plymouth and Lansdale. Got a couple more that are just about done. Um and it but it is something that we would like to continue doing. Um current office of housing and community development programs. Um we had hoped to have Kaylee Silver here to talk about all of the work that they do on housing. Um, but she has a a mandatory meeting to attend at the same time that we have our planning commission meeting. So, I am going to do my best to talk through all of the work that they do towards this this bucket of housing work that we're doing. Um, the county has been working toward opening new short-term supportive housing facilities. Got a lot of press. Um, so there is one in Lansdale that's pictured here on the slide. Uh, Cody's Place of Hope. I think I'm getting that correct. So that just opened. It's got uh 20 or so beds for for uh singles single individual people who are looking for a place to stay. Uh John, I'm sure you have been through there.

Yeah, I have. It's nice. It's very It's really sharp. It's nice place. I've been there a couple of times.

Yeah. Uh I I wouldn't blame you. Um so that that's a great addition to this landscape. We've got a additional beds that will be placed in here in Norristown at the Calb Center, which is the county's facility up the street from here. Um that groundbreaking just took place. Uh and we have a temporary site in Pottstown at the days in um which will be operational until a permanent facility is built in Popstown. That process is is still underway. Um that will be run by Beacon of Hope. Um this is an amazing change from what we had just a year ago. It was nothing. So it's it's nice to see all of this coming together. Uh which has taken a lot of work from the county's perspective. Uh the office of housing also provides gap financing to a variety of projects through home and affordable housing trust fund monies um to u so for example

where that money come from um the CDBG funding

we have CDBG funds we have home funds we have um monies you know that that come through when you know you come and you record a deed there's some money from that that goes into our affordable housing trust fund. Um, so we have we have several pots of money that go towards this. We for so for example, if you wanted to go up the street to the Decal Center, you could drive past uh the third phase of Montgomery Park, which is an affordable senior housing development that was recently completed with an additional 40 units that got a million dollars in gap loan financing from us. Um so that um so that we have money to put toward projects that that fit within the county's goals.

Yeah. Just a home and CDBG are federal cost money. The county trust funds come from the recording you budget. That's internal. Um about Kaylee I think would be the first to tell you that all of the money that flows through her office uh is you know it's not capital funds you know or we we don't have a lot of other sources of n of money that go towards funding these types of activities. Um they also have a very successful initiative that came through ARPA funds um called the eviction prevention and intervention coalition. um have this related slide here on the next page uh which is just to show that um the number of evictions taking place in in Pennsylvania and really honestly the whole nation has gone up significantly since the pause in uh evictions during the pandemic. Um, I know this is hard to see, but in terms of Pennsylvania, Alageney, and then Philadelphia, and then Montgomery County make up this this far end of the number of eviction filings, um, these are from 2023 and 2024. I could not find data from 2025 to share with you. Um, but the numbers are are up and continue to stay relatively high. Uh the eviction prevention intervention coalition, which is much easier to call EPIC, um was designed to give people a chance to stay in their homes. Um it is a a program run through our court system to to keep people out of the eviction proceedings. Um but that's going to run out of money uh at the end of the year when the ARPA funds expire. And I and at this point I'm not sure if there will be more funds devoted to it. We have a first-time home

buyers program which is a great way for people to get uh assistance with closing and down payment costs. Um but we don't have a ton of people I don't think that have been able to go through it um in the last that county funds or is that those are county funds I believe. uh through the CDBG program we are able to put money toward they're off the CDBG block rate. Mhm. Um I believe that we get about 10 to 15 households per year that we're able to access. That's it's small but it's something.

Are those in locations specific locations? I mean at one time they were qualified CDBG areas. I don't know if they're in particular locations or if the it's just an income restriction that goes towards the first-time home buyer. I don't have the same metrics as they

as distributing CBD funding for you know the next part which the funds for the home repairs. Uh well the we have again through ARPA funds we had a a ramped up whole homes repair program which did really great. Uh at the end of last year the 100 households that enroll that we were able to enroll in this old homes repair program um were most of them were still participating in the program. There were 63 housing units that were still getting repairs done to their their buildings, but and 19 repairs were wrapped up, but there's there was a huge demand to enroll in this program and have repairs done, but not enough money to to keep that going. We do have other programs through um the department our department of health and human services to you know do lead paint remediation and things of that nature but those are relatively small programs that we're both uh we also have the commerce department who has they have a mantra forward loan program which is um a a a countywide initiative to provide funds to a lot of different things that provide economic benefit to the county. Um that is also includes um multifamily development that um is either affordable or for land acquisition. And so in 2024, the guidelines were changed to allow for the commerce department to provide funds to the Walters Group and the Penrook Parkway that they are working toward developing with house affordable multif family units. Uh, and I know that there's more, but I also know that there are other people waiting in the wings to talk more about our discussion series, and that would be

Chloe. I will see that. Right. So, we just started a an internal staff discussion series about housing called housing is important um for a couple different reasons. One is because it's a big topic and we wanted to put some attention and focus on it for staff here at the county and the other is because of some of the things you guys already brought up. Um some of the issues are really complex. Wanted to examine them in detail under really understand them. Trying to deliberate uh what are the solutions, what role can the county play and clarify our own stance on certain things we're trying to work on as you'll hear later. And actually mentioned this um model ordinance and guidebook related to housing. we have to be clear on what we want to say and also because we wanted all of our community planners who are out there in the municipalities when these issues come up to be able to uh speak with I mean they're all really knowledgeable excellent planners as I think you guys but to to really have an understanding of of the issues related to housing be able to talk about them so all these things um kind of uh inspired us to start this discussion series uh including all of our community planners four county planners got a Patty um a representative from the commissioner's policy office which they now have and then of course our office of housing and community development. Initially we just had one or two of them coming but now we have more and more of them are wanting to come to you which is great. I think coordinating with them and talking with them about housing issues makes a lot of sense. So Ann and I along with Claire and John have been organizing those. We have had loved ones We've had five so far focused on inclusionary zoning, homelessness, had one focused on Pennsylvania's housing plan, one about sustainable growth, one

about parking. We have one coming up about housing supply, which gets a little bit to the question you were asking Jonathan about well just does just building more housing in TOD areas help. That's actually a qu I mean there's a there's an interesting in-depth discussion on that topic which we're about to have as a staff and then data that also came up briefly when I interrupted Ann because um the percentage of costburdened owner households in Montgomery County has gone down over the last 10 years not up and renter households have stayed the same. So that's part of what has inspired us to do a much bigger data dive, which brought up something else I said earlier about, well, there are fewer households with mortgages in the county. So that's probably part of why there's fewer cost burden owner households. That isn't necessarily a good thing. Uh if people aren't buying houses and taking mortgages, like that's maybe a problem. So looking into the data in more depth and also segmenting it by income bracket which shows a very different picture than you just look at the entire median for the county. So we're having a whole meeting that will be focused on that and we have some topics other topics coming up um related to that. So that's been super interesting. Um great discussions good time time well spent for staff I think. Um and then we also wanted to mention we are still working on the comprehensive plan believe it or not. Um this comprehensive plan is going to hold have a whole chapter about housing. Within that chapter, there's four vision statements. One is focused on variet variety and affordability of housing. One is focused on housing for seniors and people with disabilities. One is focused on the location of housing, trying to focus it where infrastructure exists, near transit, where there's job access infill. Um, and then finally, one focused on types of emergency housing, including short-term supportive housing, as well as code blue and code red housing, um, when it's extremely cold or

hot out, for example, other things. So, and then each of those vision statements has a whole set of goals and strategies that go with it. So, we are still also working on that as part of the comp plan. And now it goes to somebody else again goes to Patty. One comment before we go on the next section. I know we're

it's okay. Go ahead. limit interjections but I just a suggestion friendly suggestion that among the stakeholders that are part of your discussion group there I don't see the housing authority and I know housing authorities can be an odd bird um and sometimes maybe not the greatest name but in my opinion anyway as a practitioner in the field when you look at the spectrum of housing um supply and provision and whatnot and um you know they often serve extremely low-inccome low-income folks and Um I would just encourage I think Joel's a good person and a really good thinker too. Um and so I would just encourage you to have him as as part of the stakeholder group to the extent you can.

Yeah, I appreciate that. He's been on our um steering committee for the comprehensive plan, but we haven't included him in that discussion series. I think we have a whole session with him and invite him to other sessions. Yeah, sounds good. Okay, so I am your last act before we have that first discussion time just to give you that heads up. So, if you want to be able

um and I um I am going to be now talking about something that's, you know, a little different, a little bit more of the outside influences uh of the pending legislation and the state housing action plan. I'm going to do those actually in reverse or oops, I went the wrong way. Sorry. In reverse order, however, so state housing action plan has been all buzzed of the last couple um weeks. Um but let me just give you a little bit background on where that how that got started. when Governor Shapiro came into office. He um instructed his team to do um a 10-year strategic plan for economic development. And as part of that, they went throughout the state uh had roundt discussions throughout the Commonwealth and with different sorts of um groups and even some of their different departments, whether it's um um their human services department, their housing, they um one of the topics that came up with almost every group was housing. Housing was an issue. God bless you. and and it needs to be addressed whether it was a housing group or whether it was someone on human health and human services. So, um they announced the housing action plan on September 12th uh two September 12th, 2024. That's when Governor Shapiro announced that they were going to do um housing action plan. It was an executive order. It was signed um and it was determined the state and regional housing needs is to identify housing goals with measurable outcomes, assess the effectiveness of existing housing programs and recommend initiatives to improve housing outcomes. So um I keep going the wrong direction on this. Sorry. So in developing the plan, they again went out and had roundts. There were 15 different ones with different regions of the state and with different stakeholder groups again to try to get the whole picture of what was happening, how people felt about this, what their input could be. They had 2489 survey responses from a public survey that went out. Um, and then they also looked at the current state of Pennsylvania's housing market report. They did looked at future trends and then they did a nationwide review of the state housing program.

So that led to the housing action plan 2026 to 2035. Um it was announced on February 12th actually very locally um in Philadelphia um and by by Governor Shapiro again. And it's a unified statewide vision. Um it has five goals um and 28 actionable initiatives. I'm going to go through each one at length. No, I'm going to mention a couple of them. But um um and then and and let me go into those. So, the five goals were build and preserve Pennsylvania's housing stock again, um bring more online, preserve what we have, expand housing opportunities for all Pennians, make it possible for the average Pennian to find and afford a house, housing, um provide pathways to housing stabilization and sustainability. So, again, this is working with even the Department of DHS on housing supports and human services and folks going through crisis. How can we make sure that that isn't the reason you can't have um a home? Modernize Pennsylvania's um housing development regulations. So, work on fixing the regulatory systems and review of the MPC. I know you're going to love this one, Steve. And then um achieve operational excellence across the state and local governments. So, take an internal look at themselves, how their different departments work, what's the what are the barriers there that make it hard for this to happen in a more efficient way. Um, part of this is also appointing a deputy secretary of housing. That's part of DCED. Um, the Department of Community and Economic Development. Sorry to sorry to use an acronym. Um, they're going to do a review of the m municipalities planning code. And eventually they need to build our way out of this challenge. One of the um one of uh phrases one of the people is talking about. So um this can't be done without a budget. So again, as part of the budget, I'm just going to talk about a couple things. So um the 202627 budget, uh there's a 1 billion in critical

infrastructure. So the PA program for critical infrastructure investment again to do um exactly that uh build out the infrastructure so that there's there can be housing that that goes into the right places. And then a million-doll investment in health in the health pilot program. Um, I think that's a little odd of a title because it's a little bit more about stabilizing housing, homelessness, and addressing that as part of the reason people aren't in homes. And as part of the budget um announcement or um part of the budget like um announce announcement was policy reforms. So again, not directly related to what monies would be spent, but renter protections and housing sta stability measures um like for example seal eviction um records because sometimes um people really aren't evicted but they get it gets reported that that's the way and then that keeps them from getting housing in the future. Um and then also people who have um like what would because they're nonviolent criminal records that then because they have a criminal record they still can't get housing or get approved for housing. But it was a it was non a non-violent offense. Um address tangled titles. Someone dies and somehow the title's all messed up. It takes months and so it's to how to circumvent that probate process a little bit. Um protect manufactured housing communities. Those tend to be what are affordable now, naturally affordable because they're mobile homes or manufactured housing. But um what can happen is um all of a sudden the lot the the rents go up and so there's a cap on lot rent on those rentals. and then streamline the statewide housing leadership. Again, getting back to how the departments work together and looking at perhaps the code we work under and then planning and permitting. It was actually part of that announcement was to modernize local planning, zoning, and permitting to reduce barriers to residential development. So, again, it was about the MPC. So, now okay, now I'm going to go on to the state legislation that is pending right now. So, this is a big chart. It's a there's a half a dozen bills that have been announced mostly in

the House, but there's a couple in the Senate. I am not going to talk about every one of them, but I am going to highlight a couple of them and what it looks like their progress might be. So, allowing ADUs. So, it's House Bill 2168 is removing barriers to the creation of accessory dwelling units. Um, it was um introduced by Representative English. You're going to hear his name a few more times. He represents district 38 that's out near Pittsburgh out in the Alagy County. It is has bipartisan support. This actually had a press conference a couple months ago that I did I did attend at the in in Harrisburg. Um and you can see there there's a lot of D's in there and the ones that are um in bold are our local reps just so you can kind of see that our local reps are some of the ones supporting this. Um and then on the second line is um the two Republicans that are that are um supporting this are co-sponsors. Interestingly, Zimmerman uh represents the area just outside of Lancaster, not Lancaster City itself, but that sort of sever somewhat rural area outside of Lancaster. It's to allow ADUs by use by right on a single family lot. It amends Title 53, um not the MPC, and the reason for that is that Title 53 would then make it um um effective in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, which the MPC does not cover. So again, it's meant to be statewide and and we it certainly wants to target those cities as well. Um it is preemptive and I was told that I should probably talk about that, but that means it would um preempt any local zoning. So you can't zone against it if it if it passes as law. You have to allow for it. And um so that is something that of course will be the point of discussion in a lot of places. Um it um is in the housing and community development committee currently um but expected to be voted out on the 13th. So they're having a hearing then and the expectation is that it will be voted out um for to go onto the floor. So

let me get to that in a minute. So then there's the Golden Girls law. So um this is House Bill 21109, municipal occupancy reform. This was uh introduced by Rep. Representative Khan. He is District 194 that is in Philadelphia, the maniac. Um he's probably your he's probably your rep. Um he is also has bipartisan support. Again, English is there. English is almost on all of these um because he's been one of the big proponents of housing reform in the state. Um but you can see that there are several local a local um um representatives that are there highlighted. Um and then again the um Republican supporting this is a a woman named Abby Major. Thinking so that again it has both of that. This is one of those that would prohibit occupancy limits. It again amends title 53 uh and not 247 not municipalities planning code. It is also preemptive. Um it is in the housing and community development committee as well and it is also expected to be voted out on the 13th. I will say there has been some discussion again even in the group I am part of which is at the state level of the legislative committee that um places like state college might actually want there to be some limits on this and there's a lot of reasons for that if it's a college town but um again that is the golden girls law and they're calling it that.

Why do they call it the Golden Girls? Because in most places in Pennsylvania Golden Girls would not be able to live legally in the same family. There's Yeah. There's at least three of three. There are three unrelated in that forome. So I blame Blanch. So it's not really occupancy by non family members. By non family. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. Right. By non-family members. It does go on to that. Yes. Without changing the definition.

Most communities have pretty restrictive definitions of what constitutes. You can only have so a handful of unrelated people living together in a house. I don't know who goes out to test these things, but that's the definition. That's okay. Thank you for asking.

Yeah, but thank you. So then there is the duplex triplex forplex um which um is House Bill 2185. It has also been introduced by English um again and it still also has bipartisan support. You can see there um a lot of the people there is not uh we do not have a local rep that is supporting this right now. Um and you can see Zimmerman again is one of the is the co-sponsor on this on the other side of the aisle. Um it will allow as as a permitted use by ride on any lot in a single family house a duplex, triplex or quadruplex. It also amends title 53 of the Pennsylvania Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes. Um, so this is somewhat preemptive, but there special provisions that you would have to um show proof of concurrency. Again, a big word, but that's what they use in the bill. That means you have to show that the infrastructure is there to support doing that instead of a single family home. It is currently in the local government committee, but there is no scheduling vote at this point or or hearing or that it might be voted out. on a specific criteria to evaluate whether the infrastructure is there for to support.

Um, so I think what I read in it was that the developer has to show a letter from No, that's on a different one. Good question, Steve. I don't quite know what that criteria is and that might be the devil is in the details and that might be what be the issue that would be discussed. So then u the other one I wanted to mention from the house is the limit limit elimination I spelled that Yeah, elimination of parking minimums. House bill 2185 prohibiting municipal parking minimums. It's represented by our own representative Scott from district 54. It also has bipartisan support. You can see the same names. Inless is there. Malagary is one of our local um another one of our local legislators that's on this. And again, Zimmerman is on the other side of the aisle and is supporting this. It prohibits parking minimums totally um except like I'll jump down to preemptive except as required by ADA. So if there's issues with that then that would have to be provided. Um it also amends title 53. Um and um it is also in the housing and community development committee but there is no scheduled vote at this point.

And then I just wanted to mention as as part of one of the ones so it prohibits parking minimums. So there so if you're if a municipality when it comes to residential uses let me put let me make that more clear when it comes to residential uses. Okay. Any residential use so on multif family you would have you can have zero parking except for ADA. Yeah. Now why someone would want to build that and not offer parking to the people that have to yet they have to rent it to I'm not sure. Again it's about the idea that the market can can is the what the place to determine how much parking is needing needed. So again, let's get into the discussion in just a second. I'm almost done with my part and then we can go into gonna come up later.

Yeah. Um so I but I did want to mention there's one more that is in the house that has been um is not has not been introduced yet and it's on to and I wanted to reason mention it for that reason. Um it actually is a um memo that is very um detailed of there's a local person from Garber that's helped even write some of the language for it. Um, so, uh, but it is actually being looked at by a working group, um, that is being sponsored by 10,000 friends, um, and the PA Coalition for Housing. Uh, Claire and I are on that group with them to help talk this through because, um, it has some it it could eventually have some merit, but the way it's written, it does not right now. But again, something that somebody is thinking about, and I'm pretty sure that was introduced by Representative English as well. Yeah.

Let me talk about the Senate for a second and then I'll be done. So, in the Senate, um just recently, like last week, uh multif family and non-residential areas. So, Senate Bill 1239 calling it cutting red tape to expand housing options. Um Senator Coleman, um he is from the Harrisburg area, so that's he was the one that introduced it. It is bipartisan. Actually, it really is actually coming from that the other side the Republican side of the aisle. Um Bogle, Argle, Kefir. Not sure where Bogle and Argo are from, but keep ar I'm not sure where Kefir and Vogle are from, but I know Argo represents Platsville. So again, thinking about where the areas that they represent. Um it's multif family mixed use and adaptive reuse. It's meant it's meant to encourage that. This does amend act 247 the NPC. So again, there is something that is going to be looking at that. It is preemptive, but the caveat is that has to have availability for public water and sewer. It is in the local government committee, the Senate local government committee and there is no scheduled vote. And the other thing from the Senate that I wanted to mention before we go to our discussion time is Senate resolution 211 conducting a uh legislative budget and finance committee study on the municipalities planning code. Um Senator Schwank district 11 introduced this. It is a bipartisan as well. You can see there are um five more senators on the D side and uh three on the R side. It is in their local government committee. They expect it to be voted out on the 17th and that then would go to the floor for a vote. So this is a this is to do conduct a study of the municipalities planning code um to examine how zoning affects housing affordability examining how to modernize um whether usebased regulations are really the right way to go and dimensional regulations how that limits it. So that was my thing about state. So we now

it's time for discussion and I don't know if I'm to lead that where to lead that we actually have more presentation more presentation so much going on that we wanted to break into try to talk about a few things we can't keep keep quiet forever so you're looking for comments and questions based on what we've already gone through yeah right now so since but like this is a lot of stuff this is a lot of stuff it's over an hour presentation We thought that if we waited till the very end for everything that we'd forget. So if there's anything that is on your mind right now, this is the great time to do it. If you're willing to wait for more presentation, that's fine, too.

Does transit orient oriented development mean affordability of again? Uh question before we put a pin in it. I'd like to discuss that. I mean, does it just mean more uh housing units in that particular municipality or does it mean that there's going to be some affordability or attainability in those units?

Well, um I guess to begin with, I'd say there are a few different things. Um one, promoting housing near transit is I guess I don't know. I guess everyone's probably on the same page about this or at least to a degree. It allows people to be able to more easily commute to work or commute to do errands and that can save on transportation costs because in addition to housing costs, transportation costs create a burden for certain households. Um, also housing, as Chloe mentioned before, building more housing in general, create increasing the housing supply is one way to help reduce the hous cost of housing generally. That's a long-term strategy to do that. Of course, you're not going to I know that a lot of the housing that's being built near h near transit does tend to be more expensive, but it's that idea that you're going to be increasing the housing stock overall and with time those h those units everywhere will decrease in in cost. Um, another thing that we have discussed, but I don't know how much we're going to talk about today. I think there was a slide on this later is inclusionary zoning. um the requirement that some of the units um that there can be an increase in density um um if some of the units are set aside to be affordable permanently. Um and that's that's a strategy that could be implemented and probably would be really effectively implemented near transit. Um so at least then you would assure that some some of the units are

Yeah, that's what they add in the RF that's what they add in the RFP for implementation. Yeah, I I I like that last bit because you could have market rate housing and then I mean if SEPTA or the municipality controls the development strategy of a of a transit oriented development, they can say so many market rates, so many affordable and have some criteria for the affordability. you know, follow up being following up on all that. Um, you know, the the reality is um, you know, these are drops in the bucket, if you will, in terms of pure affordability issues on this side. Totally agree with everything Claire said on on the housing supply issue and there are other issues that that to addresses. Um but yes and because I think we've shifted to see more uh value and people want and the market wants more of this type of housing um in these areas that has worked contrary to affordability and demand drives demand up in prices uh including destruction costs. So, we're trying to get everything we can um to do that and we have to make this call.

I would say that like some of the most significant price increases in the last thinking more like 10 or 15 years have been in our more walkable communities places like Amber Amler did not used to be expensive and now it's very expensive to try to live there for example. So it, like Scott was saying, the market demand for walkable housing near transit, near amenities is has really exploded. And so new housing without any kind of subsidy is always going to be the most expensive because it costs money to build it. Um, so that's going to cost more. But for people who are looking for, hey, I want to live in Amler, if there's more options for them, some of them are going to be able to afford the more high-end options and those who aren't might have a little bit more of a chance of getting in if there are some new high-end options, which is basically what there are.

And if we go away from TOD, I would say that some of the bills that are like they're pending or could be pending um that those are opportunities that can that something could be more affordable. you're taking one unit and making it into four. Are are you really going to sell each of those for the same price that single cost or it might still so again eventually that would that would help in that process. So if we can if we can go on that would be unless we're good but no

I wonder if Kim has a comment just because we'll off um you know for decades we've talked about transit oriented development and we just went through the issue of the the expense of that it that that prime location now that these communities that were overlooked for many years now are so desirable. Right. What about the rest of the county where pe people don't necessarily want or need uh to have access to transit?

So, there's just so much out there that we need to think about those places as where we can get um reasonable middle, whatever, missing middle or whatever it is. And it's so much to me about where you place it, how you arrange it, and what it looks like. The design in those communities is what often precludes people acce accepting them. So that's a big issue. I agree. I agree. And again, we think of to one of the tools. There are many others and they'll be talk and again the T is going to be talking more about what's our next steps are and what our upcoming stuff we're doing. So was there

comment on mine? Yeah. So, I'm a little frustrated and I'll tell you why. We talk about a lot of the same things, all important issues, and I and I I love the advancement of a lot of these a lot of these issues and trying to work with the municipalities trying and understanding what's happening through the state legislature. I mean, I think a lot of those bills won't get to the Senate, won't get passed forward through the Senate. So, but that's a whole separate issue. Um, what I think is lacking and and this is not a criticism of everybody that's working on it. I think it's just a matter of trying having the right avenue to get the information to put this into the whole mix is the actual cost of con of of developing housing. Not when I talk about actual cost like everything from the time that somebody in somebody considers doing any kind of development that's related to housing whether it's single family detached deta attached or multif family when they purchase the piece of land how much the land costs the process that they have to go through and how much that costs you know I understand there's you know it's inherent but then there's the cost of money and how long it takes to get through these processes and how that is a burden on on development and that burden is a is a value and that get that gets passed on back in the back end and then just the actual cost of construction the the the um the you talked about the red tape you know how long it takes to get an MPDES permit you know is just another factor into this whole thing how in some of these municip municipalities, how long it takes to get sewer sewer capacity, um, and then just the general permitting process and then

the construction process. So, I mean, I think there has to be a conversation. There has to be some way of putting together the information about how much is how what the value and what the cost is of of actually developing housing because and I and I agree with Claire, you know, you increase the density and that's a long-term solution because the more density, you know, the more you liquidate, the more you dilute the dilute the the the amount of units that are there. So that is absolutely a help. But in the short term, you know, you talk about like the gambler station, I mean, for the exception of the affordable units that are going to be required in there, they are going to be high-end multif family housing. Like I mean, they're going to be upwards of, you know, the higher end of of rents in that area. No doubt. Right. Right.

So they might have I don't forget what the percentage was. I think it was like 10 or 20% of those units were going to be affordable. So, I mean, that's great, but it's a drop in the bucket, but it's still a drop in the bucket. So, again, we have no I agree. We have to start somewhere and you have to do something. Sure. But, you know, the cost of building on that piece of land is enormous. And the the the process that they're going to have to go through has the the cost of that process, time and money has to be part of this conversation. Until we understand that, because we could talk about all the legislative stuff that we want to talk about,

but until we understand the finances of a project and finance of how somebody gets from from from the inception to actually starting to bring those units online to so that people can start living in we there's not an understanding of how to bring the cost down so that the end cost doesn't get passed on to inevitable user.

I think there's a lot of education there, too. There's a lot of expectations when you talk to the public of like brand new units without any subsidies are somehow going to be affordable. Like how do that because everything is like you said all the things you listed are so expensive. So there's like that's not what's going to be affordable unless there's government subsidy which would be great like then we which is extremely limited as I don't need to tell you. Um there's a little bit but uh you know without that it's not the new new units that are meant to be.

I think there is a awareness of it Stephen. I I do and I think some of these bills are trying to get at either how to reduce the red tape how to get you through the development process faster or how to reduce the construction cost. I mean, in the conversations that I'm in, which are a lot of the same as baddies, there's awareness that, you know, I don't know the exact numbers off the top of my head, but there's something like, you know, 127,000 units of shortage of affordable housing in the Commonwealth, and it costs $500,000 to build a new unit. You can't build that. No one can write that check. So, without that money, what do you do? You got to try to nip at it. Uh, you know, in the ways that you're talking about.

So, I don't know how that happens. I once again this is not a criticism of the work that's been done. It's just this it's this albatross in the process that's not being addressed. I think some again I think speaking to what Kyle said I do think that some avenues are trying to address it probably not adequately in many in at this point. Sure. I will say that when but I don't think that but I don't think and this is not you I don't think they understand the problem. Right. That could be true. I think they are who's they

collective. I don't think they understand the problem. I think they're every time I've been in conversations. I've been in meetings about the MPC. I've been in conversations with DCED. I I've I've had these conversations and they all want to change the rules, but they don't want to recognize that they can change almost all they want to. There is still a process that the bigger rules that nobody wants to touch because it's, you know, it's like the it's like the third rail. They don't want to touch the bigger rules that would change the the the the process of going through development and some of the costs. But they but the bigger part of it is they don't want to recognize that something in order to make housing more affordable there has to be funds available to do that because if you leave it up to the market with the exception of what Clare said that over a period of time that you add this density it will you'll start to see some of that come down but the only way you're going to add that density is the market is going to look for top dollar because that's where things are right now. I think I'm disagreeing, but again, I think there are small ways that this can happen. If one of these preemptive bills goes through, it will be that crack in some of the ways that things happen in municipalities, and it might it might be that that that crack that opens it up a little bit, but it's a good point. Should we go on? We have about

Oh, no. There was I'm sorry. Wanted to make a chat or ask a question, but we don't know what it is. Yeah. if anybody has a comment but either if you're in the room.

This is Kim. Good morning everybody and new to this. I'm kind of going I think that was Scott. I can't see who was I'm sorry Steve that was speaking. I can't see everybody speaking but a affordability and cost um has in other cities the apartments they look like apartments but in order to get renters to own they actually make them into condos. What is some of the the obstacles precluding instead of having just um considering um uh town houses? Why not I have never heard anyone mention condos? Why don't the the builders offer some floors or some levels as ownership? Is that also too costly?

Because the own because in most cases when you have condos, you have investors or institutional buyers and then they just rent them out. So then that that also then precludes from ownership trying to move people from renting renting to owning. So they it's not possible to figure out how they can own the unit versus just rent the unit.

Um once again I can't answer this question specifically. However, you know there's no there's no legis there's no way to legislate ownership of of a unit. um when it comes to purchasing condos or houses, which is why you're seeing a lot of single family homes and condos being purchased by investors or institutional institutional companies and then they just turn around and rent them, right? Y

So even though you get condo buildings, a lot of times those condo buildings are are rented. I mean there's one in Shelingham Township. There's uh Shell Meer or I think it's on it's on Township Line and I think there's I don't know something like 90 units in there. I think 60 of them are owned by institutional buyers and they're rented or they're used for Airbnb. Couldn't the condo board of the homeowners association make a rule that it's be owner? I don't know. So,

I'm kind of bringing awareness to what you're saying is that the people saying that we need affordability and attainability. If the laws or the investors are allowed to do this, then we're going to be doing this spiral of constantly trying to figure out how to do it. If we we come with a solution like a condo, but we're allowing investors to buy up the the the units. I don't know who regulates that, but it seems like it's kind of what I think Steve was saying that those who are saying it, they um need to really be aware of the issues that are really impacting or the the foundation of what's impacting affordability and attainability.

We have a comment from online from our own Natt Popc that his own HOA, he has a condo and they limit um how many can be rentals. So that say we certainly have a lot of condos. Thanks Matt. that have been built in the county, but it's been a long time since we've seen new ones get built. Problem with with, you know, great demands in that situation, but going back to the one I'm talking about in Sheltonham, you know, 60 out of the 90 units are owned by people that are renting. So, do you think they're going to have a a condo meeting and those

right? No, again owners that would have to be done in the bylaws from the beginning probably for x number of years when you have a it's got to be done up front.

So, that's what I'm saying when we're considering new construction or development make at least make that that mention that they consider that at the beginning. It it does come up in planning commission meetings and those of us have been in planning commission meetings across the county frequently where like a developer comes in proposing something and the community is like hey we should consider condos instead of apartments but there's no legislative tool by which municipality can uh require that. So I think it's good in terms of like the municipal tools and the county tools. It's just education which is not something that we should discount at all but there's no like sort of regulatory ability on that. Um, but there may be some, you know, maybe we try to have something for HOAs about like what they can and can't do or, you know, if they establish other

That's where you hear that's where you hear the comment those people they always consider people that are renting as being less less committed to the community, less. Okay, it all back sharing. Okay. One second. I gota click on the screen. Okay.

Okay. Now, we're going to cover some of the fu future stuff and I'll try to be very quick on my upfront parts. Um, first is one more time. Go.

First is the pending housing blueprint. something I've been careful as to how much I say about I don't want to get in front of the commissioners on this as it is a commissioner's office product. However, they have mentioned it in various interviews in the press. Um so it is out there but we have not released it that all much of the work I was referencing earlier uh is and and what we're talking about today is all going into this and in fact a lot of basically what you're seeing today is almost a mimicry or summary of all of the content that's addressed. So, um, that we are, uh, I'll be candid, you know, we thought it might be released quite a while ago, um, but it has been continually evolved and discussed and now we're actually going to frame it in an event that will, I think, is looking toward June. Um, and getting more details on it. Not the same scale of event that we saw in the 2024 edition, but um, a very high still a very high-profile uh, release and discussion of it. Um, so keep going. uh housing needs assessment. This is one of the items composed in that in that blueprint and we have money set aside to get a consultant on board to do an in-depth uh look beyond the capabilities that we've had in terms of both data and exploration. Um, in a way it kind of stems off of what we knew was coming and now have seen from the state housing plan where they said, um, I don't have in front of me the numbers were like 400,000 new units is what they were prescribing to meet the needs and and and try to keep costs from rising based on supply. Uh, of that a lot of it was targeted towards the southeastern PA region as the source or the best source for putting that housing. a local statewide. They didn't get into too much detail beyond the regional area. Um, but if you just look at the numbers, um, I think it was 240,000. You start to divide that by five counties and offset Philadelphia who's talking about 30,000

units over the next 10 years or shorter. Um, and what our comp plan costs for, you know, which is in the range of, you know, 20 to 25 over about to 2050. Um, it probably falls short of those those goals. and we want to get a better handle and be more realistic. You said I haven't seen the state's full methodology on this. I can't say that, you know, we're 100% they, you know, they hit the nail on the head with it. Um, so we want to do our own look and give that information to municipalities to let them consider um, you know, some might feel we're doing our part. Let's see some numbers. Um, see what that means. And maybe they are. Maybe there's, you know, still more that would help. And again whether the willingness or the ability you know are are still big questions along that but data is critical. So that's what this is mostly about. We are also going to extend it into looking at zoning barriers. Um and um was a later addition uh so we don't want to do too much overlap with the stuff that we're already doing and and just kind of be too repetitive on it. But I think again there's a I think this work will be more of a assessing the common problems across multiple municipalities. I say problem common barriers or practices in terms of zoning that might be alleviated uh you know just with better understanding uh and willingness to to make some adjustments. So that's kind of where it's going. I would love to see something come out that's actually a tool, a resource uh might be getting into the expanding well off the digital platform that we're already working on. Um that gives again municipalities the ability to explore what's going on and what their options are and what they might want to discuss trying to achieve. Uh the MCO 2050 grant program, the question mark there is just affiliated with the title, nothing else. Um although MOCO 2050 is a great this is a a big year or transition year going from

the MOC 2040 to the to the next comp plan. Uh the grant program has all intent intentions of continuing and um but the opportunity to uh both the need to orient it in line with the new comp plan will take place and also the opportunity if we want to make uh changes. Um this year we brought on the housing criteria element. Those who have been working within committee we had our first review session. We're still going through them. I don't have a full assessment of you know how you it was remains to be seen how you know how is this approach actually panning out. U we're not seeing a lot of like direct projects that speak specifically to housing. We didn't tell municipalities you know until the end of last year that this was going to be a a tweak in the program. So, um, you know, we still wanted them to bring us their projects as usual, but we wanted to have make sure they did think about, especially if they have multiple projects, you know, how does this could this help alleviate any housing issues, support the house housing growth that may be occurring or able. Um, and I think we're seeing some of that in some of the the products we reviewed so far. Um, but I'd say it's kind of middle middle of the road at this point. Um, and I'll have a better assessment of that once we get through the multiple process. And I think we'll definitely want to report back on that once we get to the awards and hopefully be able to see some um progress and and also maybe lessons learned and take that into consideration if we want to maintain that. But that is in that would be in the blueprint as well as a goal and intention for next year for this year. and then

right so this idea of inclusionary housing support gets back to what we sort of started to talk about that municipalities work toward really having more affordable units included in new market rate development projects. Uh but what we hear back from municipalities that this is not something that they want to be involved in on a day-to-day basis. They would be happy to have a mix of units put into a new building, but they they don't want to look at people's finances. They don't want to look at their employees finances if that's what it comes down to. And they and for some of our smaller municipalities, they don't have the staff capacity to add this administrative task into what they do every day.

I think a lot of us also realize that there are other agencies that do this much better than we would. So why would we want to involve our self-defense? Um, well, you know, that depends. What we are working on doing, what I've started to work on doing is putting together a a template and some guidance for uh a leasing office schemes because

what a a leasing office, right? We just talked about how there are no condos being built. Then all of our multif family development tends to be rental property. So, it's a leasing office that is the one taking applications in from people looking to to lease an apartment. uh a leasing office could work with us to to do the intake of someone who was looking to live in one of the affordable units as well. and that we could have an ongoing oversight program here where we worked with landlords and rental offices and kept tabs on the incomes of people living in these inclusionary units and and had files here or files at the leasing office that said, "Okay, we've got 10 yellow boxes, 10 affordable units in this building. We'll make sure that as time passes that they are continued to be leased to people whose incomes qualify them to live in the affordable units.

How do how do they how do they uh how do they regulate that now? Like for instance, like Lower Marian has there's there's a whole industry of of groups that are involved in income compliance and certification in the low-inccome housing tax credit world and in the county uh you know home and CDBG financing worlds and you know it's review of paperwork. It's done by uh Kayle's department and others here. It's done by the housing authority. Um, and then there are third-party providers, a handful of them, that, you know, a place like Lower Marian could employ to double check all the income files to make sure they're in compliance,

right? But so I mean, Lower Marian, I think they they incorporated um uh affordable housing requirements in their uh city line avenue. They've got a couple of buildings that are being I know one at least being built right now that will have some affordable units put into what is otherwise a market rate development. Their their code compliance officers have the software available to them that they can use to track these units and presumably who they're being. They're not doing Kyle said Kyle's not doing tax credit of all the people who couldn't do it. I would I would

No no officer that's just outside their typical skill set and going to be an administration. But that's not but are they tax credit are they tax credit units or are they just set they're something that the developer is voluntarily doing. So um my understanding is that the mun that lower Marian staff is going to be doing what you're asking. And Kyle you're skeptical. Well Laur's a big town. You guys know more about them than I do. Maybe they have more resources, but you know, if whip pain would ever pick this up, like I hope they form it out to somebody because I don't know how they're going to handle it in house. Right.

Moving on. Other future programs coming out of our office of housing and community development and other departments here at the county. We have been talking a little bit about creating a land bank. Uh this is very much a long-term goal. Um, part of this idea being that the county has tools at its disposal to help facilitate development, to help acquire land or buildings that could be redeveloped. Um, but this this seems like it's a a challenging goal just in that we don't have a lot of distressed properties here for the county to to acquire and redevelop. So, we we would like to be able to do this, but I am not sure how it's going to go in the future. We did a study rather the office of housing and community development did a study. Um it's still being considered. Um we want to use some of the legislative tools that are already available to us as a county. Uh not the stuff that Patty was just talking about, but for example, Act 58 of 2022, which is the Affordable Housing Unit Tax Exemption Act. This gives local taxing authorities the ability to grant property tax exemptions for improvements to uh houses or new constructions that would create affordable housing. Um we have Laur Marian is actually interested in doing more with this act, but I don't know of any other communities in the state that have taken this on and looked to it as a way to incentivize development. Philadelphia has adopted parts of this act um but not uh not the one that would be a tax abatement board developers. Um and there are a couple of other tools that are identified in this blueprint uh including issuing social impact bonds and collaborating with outside organizations and school districts to help train the workforce for the future. Because if we want to encourage new development, we need trained professionals who know how to do

these things. and we want to make sure that um people here are learning how to to be a part of the construction industry. All right. Um I'm going to pass it back to Claire to go over our timeline. Is that what you were saying, Tom? Looking at the agenda and my watch. Hello again.

I know a little bit behind. Um so I'm here to talk about I think this is the last section to talk about a project that MCPC is working on the housing guidance and model ordinance title TV. Um so if you think about the big picture we covered so much stuff um coming from the state and then the county initiatives this we're hoping to kind of fit into that bigger puzzle of different housing related things that we can support our municipalities with. Um, and this also kind of ties into what Patty was talking about with the legislation. There's a lot of similar overlapping topics in this. So, the housing guidance is um meant to address strategies um to help housing affordability. And this is an update of the housing workforce um housing workforce housing reports that came out in 2008 that A mentioned at the top of this presentation. Um, it's responding to the need for affordable housing and the call for action that came from the state housing action plan and we're writing this to provide guidance to our municipalities on what they can do um to help choy the housing costs issues. So, what's included in this report? Um, there's a lot of data. We're not going to cover the data today because there was a lot earlier. Um but it really is meant to paint a picture of um how housing costs have changed and who is cost housing costs burdened. The report covers the different factors that contribute to how high housing costs such as the regulatory barriers, the zoning, parking that we'll talk about in a little bit later. Um and then it provides the regulatory guidance that in addition to the things that are listed here covers a lot of different topics. Um but I really wanted to focus on the these three ones which are to streamline the review process, eliminate exclusionary zoning and to reduce parking. All things that we have touched on earlier.

So the following slides provide a highle overview of some of the key topics that are addressed in the report and um which all play a really significant role in housing cost. So the first one is streamlining the review process which you talked about. Um so some of the review processes as you mentioned um and regulatory measures act as barriers to building more homes and increase costs. So the report um we're hoping will provide guidance on how to simplify the zoning regulation, simplify the permitting process um and and expedite that process. And then um also consider ways that the planning commission role might be considered a little bit differently um in relation to their their governing body and the decisions that are made.

County planning commission.

Oh no, I'm sorry. The local ones. Um the next section is to eliminate exclusionary zoning. So exclusionary zoning refers to zoning restrictions and other types of um regulations that limit the kinds of housing that are built in zone areas. That could be restrictions on um single family only zoning districts. that also the kind of broader term of exclusionary zoning can also refer to um minimum lot sizes and setbacks that that effectively eliminate different kinds of housing types from large swats of communities. Um and that can lead to housing higher housing costs, higher land costs. And so the report provides guidance on how to allow more housing in more places. And some of the recommendations are related to reducing the minimum lot size requirements, allowing the middle density or missing middle housing types in single family districts or neighborhoods, and allowing accessory dwelling units by right in all residential districts. And I'm going to pass it over to John Nicholas to cover the last topics.

Save all my question, John. Oh, great. Clearly, you did not. It's okay. I'm fresh. So, hi everyone.

So, one example of the exclusionary zoning that Claire's talking about, things that have that exclusionary effect is parking. So, one of the areas where we're going to be providing regulatory guidance where we want to kind of pull back on that exclusionary impact is parking requirements. Uh there's a lot of reasons for this for wanting to do that. reducing or eliminating the minimum parking standards uh you know as already mentioned is floated from the state. Um we're hoping to provide guidance uh as to why communities could take that step and uh help them to understand that they don't necessarily need to panic uh as they ease off of uh standards. just that parking takes up space, adds cost to development, you know, reduces the uh amount of housing that can be built. Um that example there of a graphic is from the city of Laram, Wyoming. Uh there's a lot of places out west that have even more acute housing issues and so they're a little out ahead of us as far as like studying this and talking about these sorts of discussions. charming

uh small um but

I mean it's Wyoming uh but understand that uh you know what cities they have out there is pretty much the only game in town because it's uh mountains prairie and uh you know the city it's the one place to live if you're looking for urban housing. Um so we want to help to ensure that you know we don't have parking uh minimums that are uh overestimating car ownership uh that are forcing you know over supply of parking and uh reminding people that just because it's not required uh doesn't mean that it's gone. You don't lose the parking that's already in existence. Um and it does not ban parking. uh developers are already under a lot of requirements apart from government you know regulations uh as to serving the intended occupants um making the business case work out. So that's one taste of what we're talking about and as far as providing other guidance uh we have model use regulations for housing types of all sizes that we are working on. We're taking a scale and contextbased approach looking at the full range of sizes of housing um and the context that we have and we span from the city limits all the way out into the foothills. And so we are looking at the house scale with the duplexes, ADUs and attention there to how the design and standards can help those different types to work harmoniously to fit in together in neighborhoods side by side. Um at the attached scale as we're calling it, uh we get a little bit bigger. We're looking at things like town houses and small apartment buildings. um trying not to get too bogged down by those details of exactly how they're divided, but looking at again the scale, focusing more on the form than the

particularities of use. And at the upper end of that scale, we are looking at the medium large apartment buildings. Um so about as large as anything gets in Montgomery County, but wanting to make sure that we have standards that are tailored to the exact context where they're being proposed. So how about dimensional regulations?

Uh there will be I believe uh dimensional regulations within that. Um but understand that this is uh you know intended to be uses for sorry standards for the uses rather than uh kind of the model zoning ordinance uh where we're focused on kind of a an ideal district um in past documents.

So I'll pose a I'll pose a collective question. So I understand this part but the dimensional aspect. So we always talk about like density calculations you know but there are other factors in how an ordinance can regulate density without actually saying this is density per acre. So in your collective mind and we all have different opinions but you know as I see it there's the basic dimensional regulations building height setbacks and impervious cover let's call it right then there's also parking requirements which we've already talked about in some sense and then there's just the plane density requirement have we given thought as to which one of those is the biggest obstacle to

promoting density. One thing I will say is that in the model TOD ordinance, we did not include a density requirement. We stuck with just the dimensional standards. We didn't eliminate the requirements, but the density we did not address. And that was very intentional. It was intentional figuring that the Yeah, size and the setbacks and other things would actually regulate, right?

Or or it could be the creative outlet that I can still put this building on, but if I make my units a little smaller, I get 10 in instead of eight. And then that's that would be an incentive. I found that, you know, we've worked in a couple of locations where the FA where they've incorporated an F and they've also had parking requirements, but no density requ there are some restricted land parts to the F that would have to come out like if you had wetlands and stuff that would not be part of the F. Some places it is part of the F. Sometimes floor area ratio for those who don't know what an F is. Okay. Thank you. I was Yeah, thanks. Sorry.

Florida to area ratio. So, if you have a if you have a lot that's, you know, let's like I'm working in Philadelphia on a project, it's they have a 150% F. So, if your lot is, you know, 10 is your lot is 100,000 square foot lot. This this is a big lot. You can build you know 150,000 square feet of floor space in the building. There's no height there's no height restriction.

Um there is parking requirement. There is parking restriction and there's no density restriction. So basically the two things that restrict you is the F and the and the parking requirement in this situation. So most cases you'll run out of F before you run out of park. But anyhow, so back to my question, your thoughts on do we do we look to eliminate density requirements and rely on

other dimensional type standards stuff also, but dimensional type standards to regulate. Let them build what they can. if they could figure out a way to build it within the dimensional requirements, do we eliminate density requirements? Then just

Yeah, that's our I think our general sense right now. Um because as we've been kind of testing these things and looking into the standards and the impacts and when uh you know density reaches an effective limit, um we find that you know a density limit might kind of set that cap and cut in first. Uh but where there are lot sizes, where there are unit count limits, um where there are setbacks, setbacks can even kind of uh come in at smaller scales and effectively set a density limit and progressive set progressive setbacks. You go over a certain height, your

setback, your setback gets your setback gets larger. So we I think we are uh currently favoring an approach where we are focused on the the form that the development takes uh looking at building envelope uh and we're not uh you know trying to close things down too early with discussions of you know a hard density limit right um or you know parking requirements as mentioned before just as often the other hidden part of this is also just the building code issues you know once you get above four sometimes five stories the cost of construction just starts to grow exponentially and that also becomes a limiting factor to some people.

One my one of my questions is also what what is the barrier to local municipal officials when they look at changing their communities? No answer. No, what I'm saying a lot of times I always come back to this is what it looks like. And one of the first times I saw a community that was extremely attractive, pretty high value with small lot singles and apartment buildings that were two to maybe three stories, but modestly heightwise, but the designs meshed was in Pasadena where that just seems to be what the communities accept. And it's a wonderful community. And the height is what people didn't want, not necessarily the the density.

I'm sorry, you're shaking. Am I right or am I We're not in agreement. Okay. I would like to encourage you though to let John the player finish the I just want to say I think we are down to the last kind of moments here too. I think we're done. I just wanted to put the slide up to acknowledge the other people that are working on this project in addition to us. Um Naomi did a bunch of data analysis for us to also is helping with the use regulations and oh Adam on there same thank you a lot to impact. Yeah. Well,

I just I just want to follow up on something that that Dulce started at sitting here and I think for everybody in this room and on the call as informed professionals and uh connection to our communities. So when we get this particular topic, the housing topic, the regulatory topic, the zoning change, the implications and how this will impact change in where for me where it starts to to lose its u ability to be impactful is every time these changes have to be presented to another level of regulation. So now you take all of this and you take it to the the local planning commission who is made up of residents and maybe not necessarily professionals who are hearing these concepts for the very first time maybe and are being told hey these are best practices you need to eliminate your parking and as residents of the community their heads explode. It's like you got to be freaking kidding me. And then you take that to the next level of the elected officials who have to make the final decision based on recommendations that the elected officials are even maybe even more removed from a planning commission background and they have to report and pay attention to what the constituents say and how the complaints and I'm thinking of ways specific about parking. there's a parking problem and somebody comes up and says, "Hey, we need to get rid of all of our parking." And they're like, "There's no way you were doing that." So, all of these things start to fall apart. And I don't know how to get past that because I think that's a really a very real situation that these changes in zoning

and regulations have to be confronted. Obviously, no answer. I get it. But I think that that's just kind of underlined there because I sit there and listen to these meetings and I know about it,

but I'm not qualified as the people in this room to kind of express this. And I think the elected officials kind of sit back and think, "Oh, geez, there's no way I'm going to say we should vote on eliminating parking." So John, just to comment on that for a second like and what John Leos was talking about is that like and I know Lazelle very well, but what Lazel did do was some things that were sort of progressive and thought about it like they really don't have a parking that septic garage. Again, everybody just doesn't want want to walk a block. But, um, I will say that what they did though is they took some surface lots and they put in that that development and then they put in a parking garage or and and part of that was to address that there still has to be parking. And what John was saying and what even the legislation is saying is like we're not going to get rid of parking. We just don't want you to make a a statement that it has to be this many per unit. let let the the the developer is still going to put in the parking that that developer thinks is necessary for that development to be able to sell it because there you're not going to be able to sell to some people who have two cars like oh I'm not going to get a parking space well I don't want to buy there so or rent there so that's that's kind of the thought like so we have to like make sure that we understand it's like we're not eliminating the parking you have we're not eliminating parking at all we're just saying don't set a minimum because that there there it will it will happen where it needs to happen but You and I understand that.

No, it's against that conversation in a 15minute presentation to like an official overt. Yeah. And I I totally agree with you and I don't want to put Adam on the spot.

This is happening right now. had a very debated conversation in Narburg about this and we we did propose in two districts kind of right now they have parking minimums of one parking space per unit which is actually lower than the rest of Montgomery County and we actually propose just for mixed use buildings in on Montgomery Avenue and then in a district around downtown.7 uh units or 7 spaces per unit. And I think the challenge I think we've got a pretty progressive local planning commission, the a younger um council, so they're very interested in these ideas. They're supportive, but I think where we're hitting a barrier, just to your point, is with the community um in really um explaining this and people not having knee-jerk reactions. We've had an open house which I think was actually more effective than doing this and actually uh residents coming out and saying wait we're we're not about reducing parking. You could explain to them well this is baking the market um kind of determining how much parking is for so I think people were receptive to that but then when we did a survey and and it was the inquirers we had you know 300 respondents people were less respect receptive and parking actually was the biggest issue. um uh that everybody had. Secondarily, it was height recent height for there was a we proposed a density bonus for adding 10% affordable units again just for mixed use buildings in these two districts. Um and so height was kind of like the secondary concern, but we're actually moving through this right now. Uh I just did a presentation on kind of like these results on Monday, writing up something for council, presenting it to council, and they're going to be voting on it. So, we're at the forefront of this issue, but I think it really is

where we're running into issues is kind of with residents understanding or not just like having a knee-jerk reaction to hearing about parking, hearing about high streets, those types of things. So, I echo your and parking is the low end, right? But I mean, but even when you talk about ADUs, yeah, it goes back to parking in the community. When you talk about removing occupancy lifts, it goes back to parking in the local community. So, it's not just commercial parking or rent or or a new apartment building. It's it's always about it's always coming up. All right, we got to move on.

Yes. Can I say one thing which is just that I think this is a real role for planning. When you ask people a more general question, what's important in your community? What do you care about your in your community? What do you want to see in new development? What are your priorities? You often hear things about, well, we want to see more trees, we want to see new restaurants, we want to see more housing for seniors. And I think when you ask the more general question in a good planning process, you can bring that into the dialogue about some of these specific issues. Um, because you get data from the public that supports, right? Okay. So, you want to prioritize green space and landscaping around a new development. Well, that means that we're going to have to limit the amount of giant parking lots that we are requiring at least by code. So, anyway, some of that can be help like the plan piece of planning that goes behind the specific issues can help.

I will echo that. So like one of one of the great comments that we did receive and that I really speeched out was a lot of uh a lot of people in Narbirth uh are under the impression that um you know parking is so important for you know their downtown and that type of thing. But we actually had someone a business owner in the feedback say since there was this mixeduse development on Montgomery a my business has flourished with these new residents. Um so really point connecting kind of like the viability of the downtown the viability of re retail connected to an increase in density. So that that part of the planning process has

Thank you everyone. Thanks very happy to continue these talks. We like talking to you. Let's take us through a complete opposite. Yeah. I can do one. You have farms to buy to put housing on. I'm not going to allow that. Give me

morning. everyone will tell everybody. Thank you for giving the county planning section an opportunity to dress up today.

I just need to take some photos to I guess I'll be there.

Okay. Uh good morning everyone. For those that might not know, I'm Steven Binsky. I manage the farmland preservation program here at MCPC. I'll try to run through this as quickly as I can. Uh given the current time frame. Um so let's just jump right into it. Uh and we'll today we'll be looking at the farms we preserved in 2025. Taking a closer look at each of them, some updates and goals we have, uh certain trends, events we attended, and some AAP projects that are happening on our farms. Uh so to get started, uh this here is a map of all of our preserved farms in the county. And to date, we have preserved 10,990 acres on 203 different farms. And uh Pennsylvania continues to be leading the nation with over 660,000 acres on more than 6,600 farms. Uh so now let's just talk about the farms that we actually preserved in 2025 alone. This map here is showing the locations of them once it loads in. And you can see that uh the majority of them kind of fall within our core farmland area of the new Hanover Douglas upper handover area with just a couple on the outskirts. One all the way up there in Marbo Township, one down here at the bottom of the screen in lower pots which was actually the first preserved farm ever in lower pots. So, that was pretty cool and uh I'll touch on that a little bit later in this presentation. So, let's take a deeper dive into each one of these farms that we preserved last year. Uh and we're going to start here in upper handover with the Jüger farm. Uh this was a 57 12 acre farm. Uh it's been in the family for almost 100 years. Uh and this was a really important piece along with the Bornean farm, which we'll get to in just a few slides here. uh because they were uh two farms um in the middle between two

clusters of farms. Now that both are preserved, it's a contiguous 438 acres of nothing but preserved farms, which is, you know, really nice to see. 238

438. Yes. And this farm grows hay and they have a herd of about 50 goats. Didn't want to do that. Go back to uh here the void farm. This is 16 and 12 acres in Marorrow Township. Uh they grow corn and soybean. They also raise horses, donkeys, goats, cles, and chickens. Uh we have the Wagner farm here in Upper Frederick. They preserved 83 and a half acres of their 105 acres. Uh they raise beef, cattle, also grow hay, and they are adjacent to an already preserved farm. They excluded a parcel back here in the property was roughly 20 acres um just to save, you know, for for future plans with the family. So is the farm the area around the donut hole.

The donut is just a separate part. The donut is not included. This this is all included here. It's just a separate parcel. So you're just seeing a different parcel. So it's everything that's Yes. Yeah. So what was excluded was actually in the back here. Okay. Road.

And moving into Freed's partnership. This was a little over 65 acres in New Hover Township. Uh they grow organic hay that is uh used to feed the cattle of Sarah Sarah's way breeding farm. Uh the name might sound familiar to some of you. This is the site of the freed supermarket on Swamp Pike. Uh they actually own all of this land which is now preserved behind their supermarket, but they did exclude the building and parking lot around the building from the preservation effort. And then the Liveen Farm here, almost 36 acres in lower Frederick. Uh, this farm has been in the family for almost 100 years and they grow hay on the entirety of the farm and it's adjacent to an already preserved farm. Uh, here is the Sicko farm. This is a little over 39 acres in Lower Potts Grove. Again, this is the first farm preserved in Lower Potts Grove. It's been in the family since 1920. They're fourth generation farmers. It's a Christmas tree farm. And also on the property, they have a little country store uh where they smell sell all different types of Christmas decorations, knickknacks, things like that, and also some custom handmade wreaths. Uh and this was also the 200th preserved farm in Montgomery County. Uh which I will touch on a little bit later. And the Bornean farm, uh this was 22 and a half acres in upper handover. They corn also have some livestock on the farm. And as mentioned with the Jurgger farm, these two were the missing pieces for that large continuous acreage. This was the farm that we just looked at to begin this slideshow. Um, so as you can see, they were the two middle pieces. And next we have the Jersey Native Farm. This is almost 17 acres in New Hover Township. Uh, this is better known as Tomorrow's Homestead. That's the official business name to this farm. Uh

it's actually owned by one of our farm board members. Uh and what they do is they provide long-term leasing opportunities to farmers with a focus on uh young and beginning farmers. They just lease out plots of land uh for people who might not have the availability whether they have um you know a live or or rent somewhere or live on a smaller piece of land where they can have a garden. Um, this is a way for them to kind of get their farming business started. Um, in addition to leasing plots of land, they also grow hay and they sell cut flowers, eggs, and honey, and some produce on the site. And the last farm we preserved in 2025 was the Clemer Farm. Uh, they're 19 acres in lower Salford. They raise catten sheep, chickens, and they grow produce, and the produce is often sold uh on a farm stand right on site. Uh so just moving into uh this slide here, here's some uh 2025 updates and accomplishments. Uh in regards to the program, we developed a new farm inspection database. The other one was just kind of old, clunky. Uh kind of made it difficult to organize the documents needed uh for when we do inspections. Uh we also began coordination for a new annual annual summary book, which is what everybody has in front of them today. Uh it was technically completed this year in 2026. Um but the coordination started last year. Just a major shout out to Farita. Um she designed it all. She you know took my ideas and all the information that I gave to her um and produced you know in my opinion a really really high quality product uh for the program. Uh we also reertified our guide book which is we have to do every seven years with the state. Uh we preserve 361 acres on nine farms. Those are the ones we just went through. Uh including our 200th farm. In addition to that, five farms accepted offers last year totaling

107 acres. So they'll be going to settlement uh either this year or next. Um field to family, our agurism map. Uh I kind of gave a sneak peek in my presentation last year about this map. Technically, we did roll it out after that presentation. Um it has close to 4,000 views. Uh, so I'm assuming it's, you know, somewhat helpful to the community, which is good to see, uh, in just a little bit less than a year. And then just other our typical newsletter and inspections that we do every year. Um, and moving into some goals for 2026, uh, the farm board's going to be looking at changing some of our guidelines in our guide book and um, related to farm eligibility and how we score and rank certain farms. Uh the county is also hosting a STEM egg expo in Oaks on April 28th of this year. Uh so just a couple of weeks. Uh this was an idea I had sometime late last year in the fall. Uh I kind of got the idea from Burks County. They've been hosting an agricultural fair for the past several years. They do a really really good job with it. I went to it and thought to myself, hey, why can't McGomery County do this? So I pitched the idea to the Commerce Department. they liked it. Instead of um having our just a standalone agricultural fair, they've combined it with their STEM fair. Um so that'll be, you know, hosted in just a few weeks. There's over 15 schools that have RSVPd over 500 students. So, you know, hopefully it's, you know, proves beneficial for them. Uh catching up on a lot of farm sign installations. Um the hope is that by the end of 2026, we will have all signs installed on preserved farms uh that at least want them. Uh we'll be hosting our fifth annual farmers gathering and potentially looking at uh the beginning of an

economic impact assessment for um agriculture in Montgomery County. And just a couple quick trends here. Um the graph you can see on the left here uh as you can see the average applicant acres have been kind of on a steady decrease over the past 10 years or so. And then the graph on the right you can see we actually have a rise of new applicants over the past 10 years. So while there's a lot of interest in the program that's continuing to build uh the majority of the farms are smaller that we're seeing uh which has been expected the past few years. Obviously, we can't preserve all large farms in the county. At some point, we run out of, you know, larger farms. Uh whether it's due to development, just no interest in in the program. Uh but it's just kind of an interesting trend to see. Uh and I think it just really speaks on um the career of farming. It's just really really difficult to actually make a living farming alone anymore. Um you know, which is making land uh really expensive. and you know the the new beginning farmers and farmers in general just can't afford these larger tracks of land which leads to developers or investors coming in and buying up the land developing it or sitting on it for for the future. Uh and this is also a reason for why the farm board is looking at changing guidelines. I kind of hinted that farm eligibility. We're looking at reducing the minimum acreage. Um, so this is kind of the reason why that that'll be happening.

Steve, is the application process closed on 2026? Yes. February 1st of each year. Okay. So that that that drip that dip in from 25 to 26 is it's that's not going to change, right? Yeah. Yeah. That that includes the ones from this year.

Uh and just a few events uh that we held or attended. Uh all the way on the left here, the 200th preserve preserved farm event that was held at the Siko tree farm. Um shout out to everybody who came. It was super super cold and super super windy that day. Uh we just had a snowstorm. There were several inches of snow on the ground. Uh which you know made it nice though. It was a Christmas tree farm so it kind of brought the ambiance and everything. Um also in attendance were the commissioners, lower pots officials, uh farm board and other county staff and the choir. County choir.

Yes. And the county choir. Yes. They're they're down there. the county choir were there. They sang some tunes to kick off the event. They did an awesome job. Uh and then yeah, in the middle there, that's John Caroff. He's president of the county farm bureau. I'm just giving him a proclamation on behalf of the commissioners um commemorating their 75th anniversary. And then all the way there on the right is just our latest farmers gathering. It continues to be a big hit in the farming community. Uh you know, so we'll just keep hosting them until the interest dies down. And last but not least, um I just want to touch on the Agricultural Conservation Assistance Program, also known as the AAP program. Uh this is funded through the Clean Streams Fund, uh in the fiscal year 2022 2022 state budget. Now, all of this entirely is handled by the County Conservation District. I really do nothing with it, so I'm not going to take credit for anything, but it's kind of a behindthescenes look of what the program does. Uh because all of our preserved farms have to have conservation plans written for their properties. And in those conservation plans are BMPPS that are outlined that they need to follow. And a lot of those BMPs are projects like this manure storage, heavy use area protections, grass waterways, things like that. So um this program is really giving our farmers the availability to the resources that they need to improve water quality uh protect the natural resources for future generations. And of course um you know a program like this that offers 90% uh reimbursement on project costs is just a tremendous help to the farmers themselves. Um, moving over onto the right side, as you can see, there was a stream bank fencing project installed on Sarah's Way Farm. I mean, you're talking tens and tens of thousands of dollars for that um that,

you know, otherwise the farmer probably couldn't afford, but through a program like this, they can. So, it benefits uh the farmers, it benefits the farm, it benefits the environment, um you know, just collectively altogether. Uh also last year in 2025 there were cover crop contracts signed for five different preserve farms through this program. And what that is is uh the farmers just are contracted with the conservation district to plant certain crops uh in the offseason to improve uh nutrient management, soil soil erosion runoff, things like that. uh the conservation district will go out pre and postseason to inspect the farm, make sure that they did what they needed to do, and the farm will actually get paid just to simply plant crops on their farm. Um and then in 2026, uh there's some BMP projects currently underway on four farms. Three of them will be slated to be completed by the end of 2026. So, I'll touch on those more next year uh in that presentation. So, I tried to run through that as quickly as I could to save some time. So, I'm a little bit out of breath, but are there any questions?

I think you've done such a great job bringing this bringing this whole program um up to a level where it is as effective as it can be. You're a great spokesman. Even your presentation was beautiful today and so concise for Stephen. It's very happy. I know. I didn't hear I didn't hear one question. He's not looking for opport. Okay. I have just one question. When I was on the farm board, it's much better now, do when I was on there. Um I was always worried about a farmer selling their land, preserved land to the next person and the next person understanding that they didn't have open space. They had an obligation to keep farming. How's that going?

Uh really well actually. Uh we we track farm sales internally at MCPC. Uh, Bill Mcclelay of our GIS section actually uh periodically will update us on farm sales that are happening. So, when we get notification of that, I always mail them out materials um you know about the program, but also in addition to that, it's stated in the deed that it's a preserved farm and uh the deed of egg easement is included with that. So, they can read through it, see what the regulations are. Um, a lot of times even on the postings, it's noted as in postings, but I mean by uh on the markets,

um, MLS system and things like that, it's noted as a preserved farm. So, they I guess the new buyers kind of get a heads up. But I get phone calls all the time when farms go up for sale. Hey, I'm interested in this property. What am I getting myself into? Uh, so I just give them a quick rundown. But yeah, really no issues with with new buyers and preserve farms, you know, not following the rules or anything like that. I think we do a good job. So, how many farms do we have now? 203.

I And I know it's an expense. Um, recently I was thinking of the fact that people preserve the farms and then they're kind of gone, you know? I mean, it's done. I was wondering if the county could send out thank you notes every year to thank people who have their farms. The fact that we still appreciate what they've done. Yeah. No, that's something we can certainly look into for sure. I would think that would be, you know, I mean, it's a modest expense, but I think you should write them. I would I would sign them. I would write I would write notes in everyone. I'm used to doing that.

But it's really, you know, it it's an ongoing gift to, you know, the people who own them might be different. The people who are preaching them might be different, but just consistency of value and appreciation. Yeah. No, that's a great idea, Dolce, and something I can certainly look into. But that's that's actually also why we've begun those farmer gatherings is to really I mean it's just a networking event for the farmers and and to just show appreciation uh to all the farmers and farm owners in the county. Let them come out for just an evening out and enjoy some food and mingling. Yeah.

So you mentioned about the AAP um program. It's interesting because you know we we see a fair amount of applications in Penvest for you know water quality containment bottle. I'd be surprised how many manure storage facilities that have come through Penvest for grant funding or for loan funding um because of the issue of of the leeching into into the into the streamways and stuff. So yeah there wasn't a

Yeah. Yeah. I think three of those four uh projects underway this year actually are for manure storage. So it's it's definitely a big issue. I always question that but I don't know what I guess regulations are but from Penvest like you know what what assurances do we have or have if we give them the grant money or the loan money for them how you know how they maintain them to make sure that they don't get they don't deteriorate and cause the same breaching that they have before but that's a whole separate issue so yeah fertilizers and things like that any other questions for Yeah, good job.

So, if it's March or even springtime, that means it's McGomery Awards time or at least time to start thinking about the McGomery Awards. Um, I have a quick I have a presentation with a few slides, but I'm just going to run through them very quickly and just say the call for entries went out this uh last week or we have it on our website. We had HTML go out and we um want Oh, sure. We um want to give everybody that heads up that that that the um the call for entries that it's open for for proposals. Um I want to remind you that this has been around since um more than 50 years. We have well over 200 and some um award winning winners over the years. And I'm going to just give a reminder of what we're looking at as part of what we'd be looking at. if you think, "Oh, I wonder if that would be a good Montgomery award project." And um and so I can get that. So again, we have the McGomery Award, we have the Charles Jay's Tornado Planning Advocate Award and the Environmental Stewardship Award.

Is that a new logo for Montgomery? That is the one we used last week, last year, and we are modifying it a little bit this year. It'll have slightly different coloring to match county branding, but not Patty's outfit.

Don't even get me started. So anyway, we will be fine. It's going to be good. But yes, so um just an idea like we always look at these where these three criteria the design that exemplifies excellence uh the process what was the process about going about getting this how how the locals do it how did the developer do it and the impact on the community so those are three things that we're always looking at as part of whether we feel it's an award-winning project um and there's several different categories and I'm going to just go through these quickly one of them is land development this is the bala the residence of Alakindo in a winner last year needs to be residential office institutional They show good site design. They show good building placement. They go show good context circulation. This is um Sor West and Kahaken. Two great examples of land development. We also do revitalization. These projects take about older places that are revitalized, more established communities. Projects can include redevelopment and building rehabilitation, adaptive reuse, infel development, streetcape improvements. That last one was from last year. Again, that was out in lower bird. And this one is in lower Marian. This is Penoid Lynn. Gors of Penpoint Landing. Great examples of revitalization open space. So this year, this past year, we did Farmstead Park in Upper Morland, lower Morland. Um it is um land conservation, community recreation, amenities projects can include open space and parks. Um another example is Stone Lee and Lower Marian. Again, a great example of open space um and worthy of a McGomery award. We also do transportation. We try to look to see if there's anything that deals with that. Again, we always this may be the well, yeah, this is sometimes the less sexy of the of the ones, but they're always still great project. This is walk a bike hot town from 2019. Um, it enhances mobility, safety, exemp exemplies best planning, engineering, it can be roads, it can be bridges, it can be the linear park um and road diet in lower and upper Marian that we ex um awarded in 2024. again good projects

that involve part of that transportation network and where we can award um and and recognize good design and then community impact. So this was from last year Jefferson golf club renovations. This had a great community impact about the economy of um West Naron Township and um and a great golf course that was um that was preserved and then the building that was built there and that really has become much more of a a gathering place for the community. but also um the Willows at East Greenville. The this was affordable housing with one market rate unit again the the redesign and adaptive reuse of the coffin factory in East Greenville. And then environmental I'm going back at Farmstead part because it had more reasons than one why we gave it a McGomery award. It also had a great environmental um impact especially the design of that swale that sur that serpentine swale that went back and forth across here and how they got all that water to absorb and not just sheet runoff. So it is again we think of sort of the environmental impacts and here's another one from the grove at Meadowwood again what they did in their community. So those just the mcgomery awards then have the Charles J. Pornetta family advocate planning advocate award. That award has been around for a few years but two years ago we renamed it after Charlie Tornetta and Alzone was the first recipient of that and the second recipient was folkways at Buenet and what they're doing there in their community. And then last but not least is the environmental stewardship award. This was awarded back in 2017 but is still a great example of what what bioalailes and what a green parking lot can look like. And um and again it what they look for is something built in the last three years that has um very has impacts on preserving and conserving water quality and soil quality. This is um awarded by and chosen by the McGomery County Conservation District, but we wrap them into our program and they're part of that's our program every year.

And then last year the Sinus Food Forest was an example. So like I said, this is the time to beat the bushes. Um please the submissions went out this past week. They're due in May, the end of May. I think it's May 29th, and the committee tour will be in June. And I'll be probably sending out um a doodle poll on that um in the next week so that we can get it on everyone's calendar. So, that's just that. Awesome. Everybody come up with ideas. Ideas, please. Really, it really does. No idea is too small or not worthy until Patty takes a look at it. Okay. director's report.

Yes. Um going to keep it to three items. Uh important ones. First with staff news. Uh so we undergoing our reorganization on our graphic design and communications front. Um Julie Guana retired in February. Uh, Farita Ahmed is moving, who was our principal communication or graphic design for communications uh, staff is moving essentially into full graphic design, principal graphic design too where Julie sat um, or or worked. And are you happy about that? Yeah. Okay, great.

That was a mutual agreement. and opening up the position she formerly held which will be revised slightly but we are here to welcome Rachel Pharaoh um who I met in the interview but have not seen since I've been out and welcome I want to meet you officially later welcome

yes thank you so much I'm I'm really excited to be here um I'm excited to contribute I have uh over 10 years of experience in both comms um public relations and graphic design so all kinds of you know visual communications and visual story telling ing. Um, I'm a resident of Lower Wind Township, so I'm super excited to, you know, contribute to the community that I love to live in and, you know, raise my family in. So, yeah, I'm super super jazzed to be here. Awesome. Thrilled to have her. And also also worked with nonprofit municipal fines before, too. So, I think that translates well.

Um, second item. Oh, and Rita uh Melie does uh we are expecting her to return from medical leave on April 27th. So we will we'll be back to full strength. Um data center update. Oh boy. That's putting it lightly. I think we're reviewing four in upper Maryland. No, you got no news.

Well, the news I want to share is last Wednesday, last week, we did release finally our data center ordinance guide in joint partnership with Chester County Planning Commission. Um this is uh not being called a model ordinance but it is chalk full of ordinance language on different topics and issues that would go into a municipality's local ordinance. The thrust of the recommendation as is very common is to make it a conditional use. And then we feel that the recommendations um bring a lot of issues to the forefront of that process and require up to nine or 10 different studies or analyses as part of the applicant's responsibility who help inform the conditional use decision and recommendations.

It has been released. It's on our website. Not a big uh printed job on this, but it's on the website. Can I ask just ask that get sent to the board members? Yes. A physical copy or a digital? No, no, no. Um, unless you No, no, no, no, no. Once enough.

And just to be clear, we we had a lot of draft versions over the weeks leading up to this. This is version 1.0 and the first official public draft. Um, and the intent is if needed, uh, we'll update it. um early feedback from and I I sent out a personal email to all the municipal managers um just letting them know and and giving more clarification. Um general feedback limited but but but positive uh and appreciation definitely expressed we had a few municipalities that were meeting on this right off the bat. we there to serve them. Um public uh there's going to be there's going to be push back uh both understanding what the county and what ordinances are allowed to do on this issue. There's obviously a lot of public sentiment against data centers. I think the bigger issue possibly might be the energy generation that goes along with it whether it's onsite or brought in. Um and we're going to be dealing with that. Uh, and we're probably going to have, you know, some

not water usage, that's up there, too. A lot of different things. Electrical generation and costs. I mean, it's there's a lot of I from my perspective, the water side is probably more solvable with technology and there's options out there possibly already. It's just whether they're just more expensive. Yeah. And I think we start off with we set the bar a little I think I think fairly high in like starting off with those system in space. There's a lot of space in space. Yeah. Um it's cool up there. Yeah.

We we also have a number of ordinances coming in. That's right. Number of ordinances coming in for review. So this is good timing for those and we'll help make sure our messaging and recommendations are consistent. Now, um, Limrich does have a conditional use hearing scheduled for next week on 2.8 million square feet proposed near the outlets. Um, forget the name they're calling it. Um, that's not anyway. Um, and we of course by MPC do not have any formal responsibility or role on a conditional use hearing. Occasionally people send it in for our comments, but they did not.

Um, and so that's happening. And as Nicole mentioned, we have a a number of proposals from the same developer in Upper Marian, and we're in the process of writing review letters uh which are due later this month on those. Just to let you know, the Upper Marian did pass an ordinance. Um but these applications were all submitted a couple days in advance of that adoption. Strategic what?

What a coincidence. So unfortunately, I guess if those who were hoping the ordinances would would factor in, um they they don't at this point, but the there's a lot of issues with that. So anyway, we're preparing our comments on that now. Uh any that's I think all I have the data set. Um and then lastly, I'm going to just quickly throw it back to Patty.

Yeah. So I have a so um listening to what you said last week last month when we gave that presentation on the models um landscape ordinance and then their desire to have break another one of those breakout where we had round table discussion or had discussions around the table um our group has gotten together we have brainstormed what that would look like and what the best right now is we have three sessions that we want to do we're going to have a one hour business meeting and then it will be about an hour and a half till 11:30 to have these three um sessions We're asking if the board is okay if um we go we we extend that to 11:45. We would be done with the sessions by 11:30 if someone had to be out of here, but then we would take that last 15 minutes for our wrap up and our feedback. And we just kind of want to give everybody a heads up and make sure the board's okay with that and give you that whole month to think about that extra 15 minutes for asking

or we cannot tell you in like today is Oh, I'm sorry. Thank you, Chloe. Yes. And this yes that would be the thing. These are these would be in person around the table. I don't think we were thinking at all about a virtual option for that part of the meeting. So it would be in person if you want to be part of those discussions here in all and and this way everybody can go to each. It's not like that way even though that's not your favorite subject. Go to each subject and there would be a chance to have input on subject. I give you instructions to new. All right. Uh that is it.

Any other any any final comments from any board members or staff before we adjourn? Okay. Motion to adjurnn. Second. Second. Favor. I see everybody next.