Remarks by Susan W. Krebs
180 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 3 of 8
- Play at 1:14:59
“I had a few questions. What's the difference in the AgPres program and the environmental trust easements?”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:15:47
“So is that land actually donated? They lose possession of the land?”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:15:52
“They keep it for a certain amount of time.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:15:58
“No, I'm talking about on the environmental trust easements.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:16:13
“Okay. And then on the three different ag preservation programs, are they all in perpetuity?”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:16:24
“Okay. Okay. Um, and then when we started this years ago, and I remember many, many years ago moved here, they were just moving into this program and the purpose was, was, um, well, tell me what the purpose was when they established the program.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:17:10
“Oh, no, the reason I'm asking, because the original purpose of when they did it, I believed, was, go back, was the enhance and protecting the agriculture industry, because we'd have a volume. And last year, we had the work group on ag. And a lot of that came out, and I think we should refresh ourselves with that, because it was very interesting. You had the work group on... And it really has changed because there was, having this large group of farmers together, you had industry here. You had the meat packing plants, or meat slaughtering plants, and you had just different businesses to come…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:21:37
“So the value to them, if they ever did wanna sell, has gone down because they can't sell. They have seven. So you gotta say, what's the value that can only have seven houses today? So we gotta look at all of those things together and say, what are we investing in? What is our main goal? If we're just investing to have green space on one place, I'm not sure that's a value to the other people that are paying for it. If we're doing it economically, it is bringing value into the county as we wanted to and have this industry like we, again, go back to the very beginning, and I think the purpose…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:22:29
“Okay, I was going to say 300. So if you have 100,000, one-third of it, less than one, You have more than one-third of the county preserved. And then you've got certain mountain roads, certain mountain schools. You've got to say, where do you have left and what are you going to do? And how are you going to support the county 10, 20 years from now? So I think we've got to look. These are all good questions. I think we need to get some more data about pull that work report out. And, again, this generational changing, are we still farming it or is it just being preserved and being called ag?…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:25:32
“Well, I guess what I'm asking is, is there a way we can still preserve land? I'm just saying, is there other ways we can preserve land that would be more useful To more people. I mean, because there's some areas we have no grant. There's no land. There's no green grass. We have no ball fields. We don't have the rec spaces. So we're putting all this money into X, and we're not being able to do Y. If we could do both, I don't think anybody would be complaining.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:26:04
“So do we know what percentage of farms that are under ag preservation are actually farming it and making revenue?”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:26:16
“Okay. And listen, I wish it wasn't this way. Unfortunately, this is the direction we're moving. And then how do we get them into, we moved from tobacco years ago into other crops. How do we get folks moved into crops that are more valuable?”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:27:03
“And one of my concerns, too, is when ag land, not preservation, is the solar that's going on it, not that we want to do it. Not to mention, we get some emails from folks, and they think it's us making those decisions. And I think we should make sure we make it very clear that it's not the commissioners that want to put solar on ag land, that it's being mandated. I try to answer that way, but we've got to make it very clear that that is not decisions we have made. I think it is a waste, whether it's ag land or conservation land or Open space land, putting solar on any kind of open land to me…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:27:43
“No, no, I agree. But you still can't use it. Other people still can't use it. It's not usable to the, to the public.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:27:52
“These are all great questions. I think we need to get, you know, get, look back at some of the data and say, where does, where do we see ourselves from here? And then do any of the, I know years ago and our work group for housing, It's never come up since then. We spent all that time on the housing work group, and one is the tiers, and I don't remember, I wasn't here for the argument about tiers. Is it something that they would want to do to look at again, just because then at least they would have some value to, we need housing, and some people want to have different type of housing, and at…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:30:00
“And can you, and the one last question, and I'll leave, this does deserve a lot of attention. That will bring some stuff up later. But what factors are important in the preserved farm? And I think, you know, the size, the quality, the lot rates, the zoning, and also just the soils. You know, what's the production levels? Are we buying the, how do we prioritize that? And are they all the same? And what's the potential for them to continue, to be able to continue farming? Are they farms that are viable, that are going to continue to produce? Or these farms want to put it in preservation and…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:35:36
“And even just helping to support the industry that we have. Yeah. I mean, I know I just read somewhere in a paper a couple weeks ago about the fact of the cost of titling doubling, and just what it costs a farmer now to title all of his trucks. I mean, that's negative. I mean, so we've got to fight to make sure that the farms that we currently have, how do we make them as viable as possible? You know what, keep the industry strong instead of just keep expanding it. I'm not saying don't do it, but just make sure that we're going to keep having this viable, because you don't make much money off…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 1:49:48
“And to go along with that, I think the map would help too with leaving space around the municipalities, because that is our growth area, so that they can expand someday. I know they have their potentially annexed areas, but there's gonna be a point in time when that's all full. And I'm gonna just say from my point of view, I don't wanna see the vision of the county be, oh, we're gonna end up being Owings Mills in Freedom so that we can do this over here, because that's not the view. We gotta look at what everybody's, we're trying to, the city, the town, we all know we're growth areas. but we…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 2:06:19
“And I want to thank you. we don't realize how the federal administration, sometimes the state administration drives how we get grants and what we use them for. And this is significant. I mean, when you look at the eight things that HUD's policy priorities for fiscal year 26 are, they're more aligned with Carroll County. I mean, they just are. And it's just, you gotta look, improving outcomes, creating competition to improve innovation, restoring balance of, just prioritizing treatment and recovery, promoting economic self-sufficiency, public safety for all. You look at these things and it's…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 2:08:21
“We'll challenge you, you better get better. We won. I meant the girls. The girls are going to challenge you, not our.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 2:16:35
“So when will we know? When will we know, like, if everything goes forward and take the injunction off and the budget process, is there a certain thing that has to happen?”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 2:17:03
“Thank you. And thank you all the partners. It's very good.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 2:19:17
“And can I ask, while we're doing this, it'd be nice to be getting some updates as we go along of what we're learning. Because I keep saying the first thing we need to do is define what it is. I mean, I don't really want to go and I want to extend the deferral, but I want to make sure we are keeping up with what's going on. And maybe we need to be a part of that. Our staff's very busy. So what have we done? Three months ago we put the deferral on. How are we doing? Who's doing it? Do we need more help? Could we collaborate with some other counties? we should at least have our body of knowledge…”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 2:21:14
“We're getting a briefing on that as well, because I'm not familiar with that.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 24, 2026
- Play at 2:21:52
“On some of this stuff, it's possible if we think there needs to be more discussion than just a business meeting, we could have a Tuesday work session on the data set, like two or three things, and just have more of an informal, if that's an easier way than putting it, if we have business meeting stuff to take care of, have it in a different format. If it's going to take more regular discussion. I agree with you. I think they're important. They're very important issues.”
Board of County Commissioners · Sep 24, 2026