Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Ladies and gentlemen, call this meeting to order. The mayor and board of commissioners for February the 10th, 2026. Can I get the roll call, please? Yes. Commissioner Kleiner here. Commissioner Pearson here. Commissioner Don here. Let the record show you have a quorum. Thank you. Will you rise with me for the pledge of allegiance, please? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Commissioner Kleiner, would you do us the honor of a prayer, please? Sure. Thank you.

Father, I thank you for this day. Uh we ask for your wisdom, for your provision for this town. We ask for new police officers and uh we ask for your protection over all of our citizens and we pray Lord that you would lead us every day and guide us into your will in Jesus name. Amen. Thank you. All right. Approval of the consent agenda. Town administrator, do you have that?

Yes. Um, you have the town meeting video summary of January 13th. You have the upcoming town meeting schedule, but more significantly, we want to reintroduce the West Ningham Academy annexation resolution. If you remember, we have been doing our due diligence to make sure that um everything is in order. More specifically, we did apply for grant money from MDE for the state to pay for a water line down to West Ningham Academy, but we although we we got approved for that, the overall approval process could be about a year and a half to go through. So, we wanted to have a couple more discussions with MD to see how viable this is. And so far, so good. they're encouraging us to move forward with the design of the water line. So that's why we want to reintroduce the resolution to keep it um upfront on it. So it's again you're not you're not voting to adopt the resolution, you're just accepting it into the record and then that'll start the normal uh 45day process.

And a copy of this resolution is on our website. Yes. All right. Can I get a motion to approve the consent agenda, please? I make a motion to approve the consent agenda. I second it. It's been moved and seconded. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none. All in favor? I I Thank you. That was an I. Okay. All right. Thank you, Commissioner Dowling. Sorry. Uh, under public presentations, we do not have anything. Uh, we are going to go ahead and skip to citizens input. Would anyone like to speak this evening? Can we go here or can I just stay right here? Yeah, unfortunately you got there. Sorry.

And all all you have to do is say you're a resident of I'm a resident of Rising Sun. My name is Chrissy Shepard. I just wanted to um to extend my um thanks for the snow removal this year. It was definitely different. It's definitely needed. Um, and my mom lives on Walnut Street, so the sidewalk, the removal of all that, you guys, the um, town really did a great job, and I thank you so very much for that. And that's all I have to say. Huge shout out to our public works crew for sure. They did. They did such a great job with that. All right. You want any highlights of that?

Sure, Cal. Go ahead. Um, so one of the things the town has been doing since 2008 is recognizing that when you get a significant amount of snowfall, there's always so many places to put that snow. So back in 2008, u Commissioner Pearson, you can recall and Chief Peterson, you remember we were getting two very significant snowstorms within like a week of each other. And so we pree or preemptively got contractors lined up to come in and haul that snow out so that the next snowstorm had someplace for the snow to go. Um, we don't get together every time there's a pending snowstorm, but given the nature and the particulars of this particular snowstorm, we started meeting on Tuesday, the week before, and we got all of our contractors lined up. Now, here's a frustrating thing is that in past storms, the state has declared a state of emergency and the town gets reimbured for all of that expense. However, the state has a criteria that they will only declare a state of emergency if the vi in the case of snow removal um or flooding is if the end result exceeds 90% of the end result of the previous one. So, what that basically means is they're always adding a rung to the ladder. So unfortunately what that means is we've not crunched all the numbers, but before you get involved in the labor of our personnel, the town probably spent close to $35,000 in contractor fees and

getting this snow out of there. It'll probably be another chunk of of change for our public works employees because they work, you know, non non-stop for two, three days straight. So these types of snowstorms do cost a significant amount of money, but we have internally and I know I speak for the elected body. We just want to do things differently than you know you your what's that old saying your grandfather's town government kind of thing. We want to do it differently and we want to get that snow out in here. And so we take a lot of pride and a lot of people don't realize it. We have three public works employees that are moving that snow. I also want to obviously thank Chief Peterson because he he and some of the police officers were getting behind the wheel of snow plows also to to move it out of here. But I would put our people up against anybody in state county in terms of clearing snow out of this devel. Now, with that, I also want to say I'm not naive to say that there aren't some nuances here and there. And we had plenty of people that sort of attested to being experts in snow plowing and telling us how we should and not be moving the snow. But I just bec I I can't resist it. It's not as simple as redirecting the snow plow when you're coming down the street. It's not that simple. And the best way I can describe it is let's just use a funny number. Let's just say you had five tons of snow between one curve on one side and one curb on the other side. Unless you push that snow off the curb, you still have five tons of snow in the middle of the street. So if you're

moving the snow plow to not go across somebody's driveway or go up on the sidewalk, you still have the same five tons of snow in between the curve. So it's not as simple as just angling the plow a different way. With that said, and our next step is in wanting to be different than the typical local government, we also went out and rented some equipment to be able to uh move snow and to help our residents because this was a very unique snowstorm. And it's all well and good to say there's no excuse for not removing snow off your sidewalk, but sometimes there is a valid excuse. and having somebody out there having a heart attack or getting injured is not worth that when at the end of the day we can work with some of the residents to remove some of that snow. So going forward we are actively looking at some creative pieces of equipment that we might be purchasing in the future so that we don't have to have to take the standard hey that five ton of snow has to go in your driveway. We don't want to be that way, but we're going to need to get some additional equipment to uh be proactive about that in the future. So,

all right, Cal, if you want to just roll into your town administrator report.

Um, I don't really have anything other than, you know, we have a lot of things going on, the uh snowstorm. Um, I would warn folks, it is inevitable we are going to have water mane breaks. There's just no way around that. When the ground freezes, it only takes a little bit of shifting of the ground with thawing and freezing for these lines to break. We have lines that are pretty much 80 years of age in our community. With that said, we have applied for grant money to replace a good portion of those uh water and sewer lines in the future, but we will have water main breaks in the f, you know, in the very near future. As soon as this cold spell, you know, freeze up, we're probably going to have water main breaks. And as always, we'll do the best we can to get in there as quickly as we can, notify everybody of the implications of it, and get them done as quickly as possible. But more than that, we want to thank everyone who reaches out to our public works employees. I can't tell you the amount of pots of coffee and soup and they get more stuff than they can actually consume at some of these events and that that makes us all feel good that the community the community as a whole comes together to solve these issues. So, we appreciate you reaching out to us and being supportive.

Thank you. Um, Chief, um, I'm going to be brief first. Um, the officer we hired that's in the academy, he's doing well, Mr. Lombardi. Um, he's doing well. He's down to a month. All right.

Fingers crossed that he continues to move forward and do well and we'll have him here on site in a month to do the rest of his training. Uh, the search is still on for additional officers. The starting salary is in the neighborhood of $60,000. And if you're out there and you want to become a police officer, please come out and see us and uh we can get started with your background investigation. Um and uh I lost my train of thought on the rest of it. So that'll be my report. Thank you, Chief Assistant Town.

I found it. I'm sorry. Um, going back to what the town administrator said about getting the information out. I I've noticed, which I hate to look at social media, but I've noticed on social media, a lot of people complain that we tried to broadcast information on social media and other forms. Um, if you don't like any of those ways and don't want to wait for a newspaper to have it, you can always text 888 se 77788. Text your zip code to that number. And when we do have an event, you will get the emergency information sent directly to your phone. So it's 777888. Text your zip code to that number and we'll get you the information. That's my report.

Chief, that that's a really good segue into what one of the things that I was going to actually bring up. Uh we do have communication capability in our uh utility system and we have reached out to all the residents to please provide us that information. We can do robocalls, we can do text messaging, and it's a really great way for us to communicate to you if there's things that we need to get out into your community. The only other thing that I do have is we are in the I'm beginning the budget process. So, all the department heads and and staff will be working on getting the budget ready. Our goal is to be finished by the end of May.

Thank you, Judy. Moving forward into the mayor's report, I'm just briefly going to uh mention our communication stuff. Uh we are working really hard to um not only reach residents on social media, but find other avenues to do it. Um we're collecting emails. We're going to have text alerts. We're going to do everything we can to try to alert our citizens when something goes wrong. Uh we are not immune to the fact that we have a lot of older residents that may not be on social media. Um so by providing a text alert system, we're hoping that they'll be able to sign up for that. um or at the very least have an email that they can access to get important alerts. Eventually, what we're looking at doing is um getting it so that if we have a water main break, those alerts would go directly to that street uh and uh those residents would be notified immediately that their water service may be effective if something goes wrong. Same thing with uh community festivals and other things that we have going on. We're going to work on ways to uh improve our communication. Uh, I do want to just again say a huge thank you to our public works team. Um, to chief to Cal. Uh, we had numerous meetings during the snowstorm. Uh, and they both worked super hard to keep our residents informed of what was going on. Um, while also dealing with some tricky issues of motorists being trapped uh on their road on the roads um as well as some developments that weren't happy about the snow removal. Um we're super thankful for them. Uh we're super thankful for our public works crew. Um they ended up having to do a water mane break right in the middle of the snow removal um in sub-zero temperatures. Uh we can't thank them enough for all that they do uh for our community. Uh couple of bad bills are coming through right now because the uh session is uh the state legislature is now in session. Uh we've written a couple of opposed uh to

those bills. Uh, one of them is a juvenile justice reform act that is going to be heard on the 12th. Um, that is something that Chief Peterson and I are going to be opposing. Um, there's a few other ones that are now coming up uh regarding local zoning authority uh that the state has put forth. Uh, we continue to keep an eye out on what's coming down from the state and what may be affected by uh how the town may be affected by legislation coming from the state. Uh moving forward into commissioner comments. Uh Commissioner Dowling said that he has no comment. So Commissioner Kleiner

um just a brief report. We only were able to meet once as as the uh planning commission for January because of the weather, but we continue to have good discussions. Um, and I too want to share my thanks to the Department of Public Works and to Calvin and Chief and everyone who worked late and worked days and days into the storm. And also, um, there have been a few water main breaks. So, it's just it's not ever lost on me that they're away from their families overnight sometimes um, and their families are missing them. So, thank you so much. That concludes my report. Thank you,

Commissioner Pearson. Well, I have the fortunate saying that I was sitting in Florida when all this happened. Okay. And it was I think it was 81 that that Saturday. Uh however, when I got back, I heard nothing but positive things about our public works and all. I mean, my neighbors were coming up to me saying they did a great job and all. So, even though you're not here, word gets out pretty quick of the job they did. And I want to just say I appreciate what they did. So, that's the end of my report.

Calvin, did you have a brief comment regarding the zoning stuff?

Yeah, I I think it's important um to step back for a second. If you remember when the cannabis legislation came in and people wanted to know why we were allowing cannabis in the community. Um, another one that comes in that trunk there is solar panels. What I'm alluding to is our state government is navigating towards taking local control away from local government to regulate these things. So let's let's talk about what that means. It's a rural community. We like the rural nature of the community and people pick and choose where they want to live. If they want to live in an urban area, they can live in an urban area with public transportation. if they want to live in a rural area, maybe the side effect of that is there's no public transportation. But what the state has been doing over the last couple of years and and and I'm going to sort of call them I don't want to say quite threats, but what they keep gravitating towards is a one-sizefits-all way of regulating things. So they are looking to take away and not just the town of Rising Sun, not just Cecil County, but every county in every town in this state the ability to regulate residential zoning. So what that means is that if you go into the Summer Hill development and you say, "Wow, it's a halfacre piece of land and that's just the right amount of land I want for the size house that I want." Or you could go down to uh break or I'm sorry uh Keles Mill and say, "Well, I want a townhouse development. I want to move down there." You're not going to have that right effective October of 2026 if this legislation gets passed. And the new legislation is going to be

no community can require a lot size larger than 5,000 square feet. So, I believe um you live on Manor, is it? Yes.

Yeah. That's like half the size of your lots right now on Manor Court. So, we're not going to be able to regulate lot size. We're not going to be able to regulate house size. We're going to have to allow houses to be five feet from the property line, which means they're going to be 10 feet apart. And we're not allowed to require a setback of greater than 10 feet. Which what that means is you will not see anybody parking in a driveway in front of a home again because the average car a sedan is anywhere from 16 to 22 feet long. So unless these cars are going to block the public sidewalk, that's what we're going to be dealing with. which means we're going to have more traffic parking out on residential streets. Some of those streets are older, might not be wide enough. We've talked before about the changes the town has made to in our zoning code that's going to be eliminated. And the other thing they're talking about doing is allowing any residential property that has not been subdivided in the last three years to subdivide. So, not to pick on Manor Court, but what that particularly means is Manor Court people could say, you know what, I want to build another building behind my house and I want to rent it out to people and we can't we can't charge impact fees for that. So, what that means is the sewer and water repairs that the town has made in the past, the high sewer and water rates, we're not going to be able to pass that along to new development in the future. So essentially what that means is future land owners are going to receive more profit for their land and developers are going to be able to build more houses which is profit for them but

the existing taxpayers are the ones who are going to have paid for that sewer and water infrastructure. So when you think about it your head just like just wants to pop like what is the logic behind that? But I think it was Ronald Reagan who always said the this the nine scariest words are, "We're the government. We're here to help you." That's what it sounds like the state is trying to do is help different populations or communities, but they're trying to do a one-sizefits-all. So, that's pretty scary. And we're going to lose control in the future if that bill is passed.

Yeah. And I think that uh Cal and I are are putting forth a letter to the housing committee um in the general assembly because that's who's putting it forward right now. Um and those legislators we hope to reach out to and explain uh what is going on and and uh how it's going to affect our rural community. And I think the Maryland Municipal League is also they are writing against it too. All right. On on our schedule, you can see our board of zoning appeals, upcoming town events, upcoming town holidays, our trash, recycle, and yardway schedule. Is there anything else to come before the board this evening? I think this is our shortest meeting we've ever had. No,

I think it was 11 minutes. Can I get a motion to adjurnn? I make a motion to adjourn. Second it. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor? Meeting ajourned.