Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm call this meeting to order of the mayor and board of commissioners for September the 30th, 2025. Can I get the roll call, please? Emily Kleiner here. Mayor Marian here. Dave Hornick here. Augie Pearson here. Let the record show you have a Thank you. Will you rise with me for the pledge of allegiance, please? Pledge 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. All right. You bow your heads with me for a brief prayer. Father God, I come to you tonight on behalf of our town. Lord, I ask that you watch over our citizens. I ask that you watch over this elected body and their families as well. Lord, we know the trials that they go through. Please be with our citizens and our armed forces as well as our police and emergency services in Jesus name. Amen. Thank you. If the board will allow, I'm going to do a small special comment period. Uh, as many of you know, I've recently made an endorsement. Uh, and uh, I just wanted to take a second to address that. I have never viewed my role as mayor through the lens of serving a political party. I serve the people of Rising Sun just as every member of our board does. Our responsibility is first and foremost to our citizens, the families, businesses, and neighbors who call our town home. That means sometimes I agree with decisions made in Annapolis and sometimes I don't. Anyone who follows me knows that I've spoken out, written letters, and made posts when I disagreed, whether on fee increases, Second Amendment rights, or other policies. Leadership isn't about blind loyalty to a platform. It's about building relationships, finding solutions, and securing results for our community. I know not everyone agrees with my endorsement, and I've heard from

many of you who are disappointed. Some would prefer that I say something sharp or partisan, but that's not who I am. I encourage anyone who's willing that I would be more than willing to speak with them, and I will always listen, even if we don't see eye to eye. At the end of the day, my focus isn't party politics. It's rising sun. It's our families, our small businesses, and the progress that we continue to make together. Moving forward into citizens input, would anyone like to speak this evening? Um, I have two things that I wanted to bring to your attention. Been trying to work on them on my own and had no luck. Um, in the area where I live, Sunrise Estates, the boxes that Delm Mara Power has in there, like junction boxes, are rusty and ratty looking. I've asked them if they would They are not answering me. I mean, the rest of us do a pretty good job of keeping our properties looking good and they look horrible. Okay. Secondly, Armstrong is doing their 10G upgrade. They have not told any of us, any of my neighbors or me, when they're doing what they're doing. They come in and they dig up our yards. They put in flags and not tell us. They were walking in people's properties putting little flags in the yard. All I've got probably a half a dozen white flags in my front yard. I had real fun mowing on Friday. So, I'm trying to get over time and say, can you at least be, you know, a good neighbor and tell us what's going on and why weren't we notified in advance of all this going on? I just feel like there we're being ignored. So, thank you, Jane. Would anyone else like to speak this evening? All right, moving forward into reorganization. All right, I'm gonna try to make it through this. So, uh, tonight I am very sad to report that we have two commissioners who are resigning for office. One of them no longer resides in the town of Rising Sun

and the other one is resigning due to health issues. I want to take a moment on behalf of our board to thank them both for their dedication and service to Rising Sun over the past decade, which has left an indelible mark on our town. to Commissioner Dave Warick, who has been more than a colleague. He has been a close friend. Long before we ever held office, Dave could be found volunteering at town events. From lending a hand with movies in the park when I served as parks commissioner to supporting endless projects with our local scout packs, his willingness to step in and help, no matter the task, has always stood out. And in true Dave fashion, I'll share a story. When I first thought about running for office, Dave actually told me not to do it. He tried to talk me out of it. And yet, Fate had another plan. Not only did I run, but we ended up serving over a decade together. That mix of humor, honesty, and friendship has always been a at the heart of who Dave is, and it's something that I will always cherish. Thank you to Commissioner Pauline Brawn. She has demonstrated that same level of heart, dedication before ever joining the board of commissioners. Pauline faithfully attended every town meeting sitting in the front row. She also gave more than a decade of service to our planning and zoning board where her thoughtful input helped shape the growth of our community. As streets and sidewalks commissioner, Pauline walked our streets often, paying attention to every detail and making sure that residents concerns were heard and addressed. She has been an advocate for the everyday needs of our citizens, ensuring that the foundation, our streets, our sidewalks, and that our connections remain strong. Thank you to Pauline. The service of both Dave and Pauline should not be understated. Their leadership, time, and passion for Rising Sun has helped guide our community forward, and their legacy

of service will continue to inspire all of us who remain. On behalf of the staff and our entire town, thank you so much for giving so much of yourself to this small town. I will take a moment and turn it over to Dave. Pauline, unfortunately, due to health reasons, was not able to join us tonight, but we did receive her letter of recognition. And I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Commissioner Dave Warning. Okay. Well, thank you, uh, Mayor Marian for those words. Um, after 11 years in my role of town commissioner following my initial seven years on the board of planning and zoning, my 18-year journey with the town of Rising Sun. I was fine until you said that for has come to an has come to a close. Please accept my resignation from the board of commissioners effective immediately. It has been an honor to serve with such a dedicated group of people and a privilege to call you all friends. I was fine until you had to say something. I'm proud of what we've accomplished as a body and I'm certain the best years of rising sun are ahead of us. While many political bodies have been defined by chaos and dysfunction, I'm proud we have worked as a team to advance the interest of the town. There is no elected body or staff more dedicated to their organization than that of rising sun. I hope to see the town keep up the efforts to complete the Octura railroad rails to trails project. Much work has been done, but there is still significant work to see this project become a reality. Completion of land acquisition, establishing funding, and ultimately the construction of the trail system. I hope to be invited back for the ribbon cutting. I'm excited to see what comes next to Main Street and to the town of Rising Sun. I know there is much work to be completed, but I'm confident that the town will be a shining example of what can happen when people work together to accomplish great things.

So before I uh Thanks. So um so my last official act as a town commissioner was interestingly enough to a trip to Rising Sun, Indiana. So, I um present to you from the So, I I took a mayor or letter from the mayor of Rising Sun, Maryland to the letter to the mayor of Rising Sun, Indiana um uh requesting to establish a sister city program. You got back a Navy Bean fall festival shirt. So, um and some coffee mugs and pins. So, uh so Rising Sun, Indiana is actually a little smaller than Rising Sun, Maryland. Um they are and here's the mayor's business card. It's seen better days. Sorry. Um so Rising Sun, Indiana is 2500 people, but it is the largest town in uh Ohio County, Indiana. And uh it is a town of 5,000 people, which coincidentally is also physically the smallest town in um in Ind or the smallest county in the United States. So just a very interesting we had uh very interesting conversations. Um, the one thing they do have that I know you're gonna be disappointed to hear this is they have water. They have a they're on the Ohio River and they have a really cool riverfront area that they've um built out, but uh it was it was one, huh? Man, make one. Yeah. So, but um it was uh it was a very interesting trip and it was very uh it was neat to just be in the area and have the chance to sit down and and talk with mayor of Rising Sun, Indiana for a while. I think Rising Sun, the mayor of Rising Sun, Maryland is is still better, but the Rising Sun Indiana mayor is definitely very close second. So, a really nice guy, actually. Thank you, Dave. So, and interestingly enough, it's on North Walnut Street. Yes, I I that didn't that was not lost on me, actually. That's pretty cool.

Thank you, Dave. So, with that, I am going to step away from this. I guess we're going to Okay, give you this for now. Obviously, more to come. Thank you. Thank you for your decade of service. Thank you. Appreciate you. You'll be missed for sure. [Applause] I guess I got to get Yeah, you got Well, buddy, we served a little longer. Yeah, we did. And uh Well, no, actually, I think Travis and I served a little longer. Yeah, but remember Well, yeah, you were around planning and zoning when you were in planning and zoning. I think you were one of the ones that tried to talk me out of running for commissioner. I think I said you instead of him for planning and zoning. Remember that? Well, it was Keith Campbell. Actually, dear dear Debbie. Dear Debbie, that's what it was. Dear Debbie, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Good luck, Dave, with my leg. Round the board. Let me grab all my stuff here. all this, but thank you. Appreciate it. Do you need your bag back, Dave? No, that bag is from Rising Sun, Indiana. So, point that out. I'm working my way over there. Are you leaving? Um, I guess I'll go into the audience for right now. I think there's an appointment that maybe I should stick around for a second. You can heckle? Yeah. No. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you to the uh audience for that. leeway. Uh, as you can imagine, uh, Dave served a long time with us and, uh, his he has left an indelible mark on our community. All right, moving forward into the consent agenda. Town administrator, do you have that?

Yes. Um, we have a lot of items on the consent agenda and as we have discussed in the past, the reason for the consent agenda is to try to save time on things that might sort of be a um just a matter of course of business. So, you have in here you have what we always have the meeting uh the town uh meeting video summary from July 15. We have resolution 202519 which is board of zoning appeals appointments. So let me just say the following the following resolutions 1920 21 and 22 are all appointments to various boards that are within the structure of the town and they all have term limits. So, every year we usually have to either reappoint some folks or um either reappoint some folks or find some new folks in here. And as you can see, this is a very full agenda. So, we've been scrambling here. Um 202519 Board of Zoning Appeals is going to is recommending the reappoint of Joe Scalia who's been on the board for many years. Um and also Skip Use who used to be a town commissioner and he's been on the board for many years. 202520 for our planning commission is to reappoint Michael Vizdac who has completed a five-year term actually three I think he filled in for someone who had stepped down so he's been on the board for about three years um 202521

is appointment of uh members of the board of election judges with a town election coming up uh later on in um October, we have to have some folks serving on that board. Um and we are submitting Mr. David Klene, William Mian, and Paul Hudson to serve as a board of election judges that day. We do have one vacancy on there that is usually a fill in. The process needs three people. We usually like to get a fourth person just to fill in u if something happens. So we have another meeting coming up in October prior to the town elections. So if we can potentially get a fourth person to serve on that. Um it does pay. We do um compensate members uh who serve for that day $150 uh for the day. we buy breakfast, lunch and dinner. Um so that is that one and then 2022 202522 is appointments to our um ethics board and we're looking to reappoint an Andrew J. Snider who's been on the board for a couple years and then some guy named Dave Warick stepped up and said he'd like to serve on the uh board too. Um I think it's important to note because sometimes um our our viewing audience might not be aware of so certain things that are in place. Number one, there are certain positions on our boards that do allow out of town folks to serve on those boards. So, I just want to clarify. We just talked about Commissioner Warick

having to step down because he no longer lives in the town. However, on the ethics board, uh, members are permitted to not be a town resident to serve on the ethics board. So, I wanted to throw that out. So, that is the four resolutions that you have before you. Going back to the other items on the agenda, as you know, in the past, the elected body has the ability to declare every once in a while we have recognized holidays that fall on a Tuesday or a Thursday. And so instead of having town operations ramp up for a day and then uh you know shut down again, the elected body has the options under the town code to declare the day before that type of holiday or the day after as a holiday. So in this particular case um Veterans Day um is actually on Tuesday uh uh November 11th. So this would be a situation where the elected body can choose to grant Monday uh the 10th as part of the Veterans Day holiday. And then you also see the upcoming town meetings. A point to note is November 11th, as I just said, is actual actually actually Veterans Day and that is when we would normally have a meeting. You could go ahead and determine that you're going to move that meeting to November 18th, which is what I have on the consent agenda. You could pick another date or you could leave it blank and we can figure it out over the next, you know, couple of weeks. November the 18th. No. No.

So, keep it on the 11th or No, the 18th. Are we good with that? Yeah. We're good with it. Okay. Let's move forward with that. Okay. So, that's your consent. I get a motion to approve the consent agenda. Please make a motion to approve consent agenda. Is there a second? A second. Uh, it's been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? Hearing none. All in favor. I I consent agenda approved. Thank you, Commissioner Warick, for wanting to serve on our ethics board. We really appreciate you and your years of service to community. That is going to continue. So, yeah. All right. Uh Dave, you don't have to stay at all because there's so much stuff. Calvin's going to be talking for about two hours. Oh, I mean Yeah. Thank you. All right. Um, no. May May I just say something, Dave, before you leave? I was going to do it under my town administrator's report, but since you're leaving, I'll do it now. I just want to say I deeply appreciate your commitment to this town. Um, as you know, first of all, you and I go back a long ways and been through a lot of uh trials and tribulations with the processes in the town, and you've been very instrumental to helping to clean up a lot of the inefficiencies that occurred and were in existence with the town. and you've always been someone you and I have both been up at two o'clock in the morning talking on the phone, you know, about different things. One of the things as a public servant that I've been for the last 43 years now, I guess in several different communities, I actually get choked up and excited about just what it takes to

be an elected official, you know, just let alone all the other stuff, just the commitment that that you have to bring to the table. And I get to serve with a lot of wonderful people who wear their community on their sleeve. And they make tough decisions that nobody's going to like, but they have to make those decisions. They have to face criticism from people who don't understand the inner workings of what goes on. And just like this board now and boards previously, you have always done that with, you know, the utmost amount of commitment to doing the right thing, respect for the constituents that you serve, to take the heat when there's heat to be taken, you know, and and that that is what I love about being in municipal government is working with people who really are volunteering their time to better their community. So, I didn't want you to get out the door without me being able to say that to you. And I I just deeply appreciate I've learned so much from you and I just appreciate everything you've done for the town of Rising Sun. Appreciate it. I'll still be down. Give me a call. Yep. All right. All right. Moving forward. Oh, resolution. Uh, we have a lot of things on our agenda. Let me just cap it off by saying, you guys know this, but maybe the general public doesn't know it. The town is at a tipping point. not a tipping point, maybe a turning point, and we've heard that a lot in our society lately, but we are experiencing our own turning point from having been in really bad financial ways going all

the way back to the to the early 2000s. Um, I've said this before, the town of Rising Sun is one of the only communities in the county that has actually lowered real estate taxes over the years. Um, one of the things I'm really proud of and I know you guys are too is that when COVID hit in 2020, the f that hit, if you remember, around March, April, really started taking shape on the impact it was going to be. And this elected body right out of the gate lowered the town real estate tax because we knew there was going to be unknown financial impacts on our residents. And so we didn't want to be reactionary later on down the road. We wanted to be proactive down, you know, up up front. So there's been so many projects that we've been working on over the years. When I talked about the trials and tribulations, where we are at today is a result of a lot of hard work from so many people and residents, residents that have served on our various boards and and people that have come to our town meetings in the past and participated in things. We are at a turning point where this town, I believe, is going to be in a position for long-term sustainability. It's always been my goal to put us in a position where we're not dependent upon the federal government. We're not dependent upon the state government. In many ways, I'd like it if we didn't have to be so dependent on county government. We have enough resources and opportunities in this town to put ourselves in a long-term sustainability. And that's where we're at right now. We have 12 land development projects in the different uh cues here. The value of our

homes is off the charts. We still have homes that go up listed for sale and within a week later, within a week, sometimes within hours, they're getting market requested value. Sometimes people are coming out of pocket for cash in hand to be able to buy the houses that we have in the town of Rising Sun. So, it the you always hear that saying, the glass is half full. I don't think the glass is half full. I believe the glass is 3/4 full and rising quickly. So, a lot of the stuff you're going to that we're going to talk about tonight is a culmination of a lot of work over the years from so many different people and it's it's it's the steps we need to take to lock down the momentum that the town of Rising Sun has been experiencing and will continue to experience going forward. So, one of the first things I I wanted to throw that out there to explain why this is going to be a little bit long. So, the first thing we have out there is resolution 2025-16A. Now, you're going to remember this because this was the annexation of West Nodingham Academy. And if you remember back in July, a lot of the corporate a couple of their corporate people came out and talked about number one, they have PAPS in the water. Everybody reads about PAPs in the news. Well, we have PAPS in in and around us. Our water quality is good. We do not have PAPS in our water, but other folks are experiencing that. And West Nodingham Academy is one of those. So, we were able to work with the Maryland Department of um of the environment to secure grant money to run a waterline from the town of Rising Sun to West Nodingham Academy. West Ningham Academy

is also under new ownership who wants to continue the legacy of a school that's I believe about 281 years of age is the oldest boarding school in the United States and they have a lot of great ideas that they want to do and expanding the footprint and the cultural benefit of that of that campus and that facility but they need water. They can't do any of that without water. So, as part of the process of getting water to them, we typically want people to annex into the town before we provide water. Now, there's a couple ways of looking at that. In reality, even though our water rates are high, we've talked about that before, our water rates are high because of the amount of money we had to finance to come into compliance and to fix our wastewater treatment plant. My point is, you don't really make money on water and sewer. There are many public utilities um that are actually losing money on the sewer side. It's so hard to stay afloat, no pun intended. on the sewer and on the water side. So you don't make water on the water side. And so if a community is going to provide water, the way it has the opportunity to make money is through the real estate tax. We are going into this annexation knowing that West Ningham Academy is a nonprofit entity and they are not going to be paying real estate tax to the town. But what they are going to be doing is something that I'm not so sure you can measure, which is the prestige of having the oldest boarding school within the town of Rising Sun. As the mayor and the chief will attest to,

we've already been invited to meet with ambassadors because th this is a worldrenowned boarding school. And so, um, I believe was was it New Guinea that came in recently? If you go into West Ningham Academy, they have flags representing every student that has come from abroad to get an education at West Ningham Academy. So, when you go in the lunchroom, there must be 60 70 some odd flags hanging from the ceiling. And as I told the mayor today, we're being invited to meet with the ambassador of Costa Rica in in the next month or so. They're trying to put that together. Ivory Coast. Ivory Coast. I'm sorry. You are correct. Um, so there's a lot of prestige in doing that. And so we are doing this annexation because we got a lot of water in the past so that we can be a regional supplier of water to people that are incurring nitrates in their water and now we have PAPS. We have some facilities that have lead in their water and we are sitting up here in the north with a whole lot of water and it gives us the ability to u to provide that water to other entities which in theory the more users you bring into the system, the better the more able you are to bring your water rates down. And so we're doing this to get more water sold. Even though you don't make a whole lot of money on water, you still are in a position to lower the water rate for our residents. And this goes back to what I've said so many times that back in 2014 [Music] when the town was entertaining these

water lines. The idea was we could pay eight and a half million dollars to get just the amount of water we needed by investing in infrastructure, but for another million and a half, two million, we could more than triple the amount of water that we could get. That is that statement comes from the fact that when you bring all the equipment out and dig up the trenches and lay a pipe in the ground, we're talking about pennies on the dollar difference between an 8 inch pipe and a 16inch pipe. So, we made the additional investment to be able to bring more water into the community so that we could sell that water and then offset the financial upcharge that we had to do the construction to begin with. So I I I like to remind people of that. So when we did the annexation a couple of months ago back in July, um that's a very interesting site out there and this is showing the annexation u map showing how the annexation was going to take place. However, if you look over here on the right hand side, um, where my mouse is showing up in here, we had created what is called an enclave. And when you do an annexation, you can't surround county properties with incorporated town. That's a state law. So, inadvertently, an enclave had been created, which got lost in the details. And as we were proofing everything, we realized that. So we had to get the survey work redone. And so although you're allowed to make changes to everything, I just thought it would be better for you guys to accept the resolution again um and then we'll start

the clock over again as part of the annexation process. I wanted to clean that up right from the get-go and eliminate the enclave. So basically what you have in front of you is the resolution where you're just accepting it as a resolution submitted to the town and then we'll go through the process of completing everything else as we do under annexation processes which will include your um 45day review by the county and the state and then the the uh the annexation would not take effect until 90 days from Now, could I get a motion to approve a reintroduction of resolution 2025-16A? I make a motion to approve resolution 2025-16A. Second. It's been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? Hearing none. All in favor? I. Thank you, town administrator. So, the next item that we have is uh an ordinance 2025-03. Now, this is an ordinance related to West Nodingham Academy. So, right now, West Nodingham Academy is spread across five different properties in the county. And some of the properties have what the county calls is RR or rural residential, which is primarily focused on residential development. that basically at a minimum and there's different layers to it but in a nutshell for every house you build you have to have three acres of land and then there's other portions of the campus that are in what is called the NR the northern agricultural and that is sort of a land preservation effort and so when you look at that

compared to residential home construction um you need 10 acres for every home that you're going to build in the N. But the point, the salient point here is this is not a residential development. This is a a school, a boarding school. And in zoning language, it's what you would consider a legal nonconforming use. But as I have said in the past, when you have something that's recognized as a legal nonconforming use, that doesn't mean you get to make the nonconforming more nonconforming. So what that means is if you have a height limitation in your community of 35 ft and when they made the zoning codes, they basically just blanketed over the community and they said no building can be more than 35 feet tall. Well, what if you have a building that's already 40 feet tall? That's declared a nonconforming use, a legal non-conforming use. But let's say the owner comes back and says, "Well, I want to make it 42 feet tall. It's already non-conforming. What's the big deal?" Well, the big deal is you can't make a legal non-conforming use more non-conforming. So in order to help this West Ningham Academy be vibrant and successful, we set out through the planning commission to create a zoning that is specific for what they want to do and what we would like them to do. So said differently, it's not and I always talk about a business plan. Every business has a business plan. Well, the town of Rising Sun, any town has a business plan, and it's not a very good business plan to have a potential residential development sitting three, three and a half miles outside of your

town because the services that are needed on a residential development are totally different than the services needed on commercial. You've heard me say this before. There was a Brookings Institute study done probably 20 years ago that said for every $1 of real estate tax that you collect for commercial property, you can expect to have to spend about 33 cents for every $1 collected. On the residential side, it's for every $1 you collect, you typically have to spend $1.37 in expenses. large 20 year old data that I'm citing there. The point being is that there's a lot more expectation and services needed from an incorporated town when you're dealing with residential and it's not a money issue why we don't want to do that. We just don't want to have to deal with the neighbor disputes which are common and it's our job to resolve them. We don't want to have, you know, police having to necessarily patrol up and down the streets of a community three and a half miles away. Uh we don't want to have our public works down there fixing potholes. It's it's just not a good re use of resources. So, one of the things we're doing is trying to make sure that this 180 some odd uh um acres of of ground, and I think it's actually in the actual resolution there of how many acres it is. We don't want that to suddenly be used for something than what we think we're getting when they annex into the town. So by creating this educational cultural educational zoning district, we are in essence saying that we're going to allow you to annex in the town with

the idea that you're going to continue to operate that as an educational facility and a cultural campus because what they have said they want to do is eventually grow the school from daycare to 12th grade. They're talking about building an amphitheater for performing arts. They want to get into um a lot of upscale education and cultural activities. So, we want to be able to create that zoning district and make sure that that is what they are going to do. So what you have in front of you in ordinance 202503 is the creation of a new educational and cultural campus called ECC. And I have it up here on the screen and um the purpose and intent of this zoning district. The educational and cultural campus district is intended to provide for the development and use of land and buildings by educational and cultural institutions and a comprehensive campus style environment. The district permits core educational and cultural uses along with closely related housing administrator and support services while ensuring compatibility with the adjacent land uses. So you can look at all the things that you would normally say, all right, that's what I would expect to find on an educational campus, but we wanted to we wanted to put that in there. If we don't do some of the stuff that we are doing, that might require them to come in before the planning commission and get numerous approvals and variances because it it's it's it's not going to fit in within our zoning code if we don't make a zoning change to help it fit. So you can see where they can have research and development facilities affiliated with educational

institutions, academic performance spaces, auditorias and theaters, community centers and educational conference facilities. Um permitted accessory uses. They can obviously have student dormitories and residence halls, onampus faculty and staff housing, dining halls, campus bookstores, recreational and athletic facilities, on-site maintenance, security and utility buildings, child care centers operated by the school, health clinics serving students, faculty and staff, religious facilities associated with the campus, commercial, residential, mixed occupancies that are operated by the school housing provided to students of the school only. So let me stop for a second. They can build houses, they can build apartments, but it's got to be related to either faculty, staff, or students out there. So they can't take 30 acres of land and sell it to a private developer to just come in and build houses. We want to make sure that this stays as an educational campus. Um here are some conditional uses that would be subject to special exceptions. Conference centers and hotels associated with educational use. Technology incubators and labs affiliated with campus programs. Parking structures up to three levels with the upper level being an open deck. Transportation hubs or shuttle terminals. If they have reason for people to be coming and going or staffing, they can do that. Prohibited uses. The following uses are prohibited. General commercial retail and service establishments not operated by or on behalf of the campus institution. Standalone industrial or

manufacturing uses. unaffiliated market rate residential development including single family subdivision apartments or condominiums not used for student faculty or institutional housing automotive service stations drive-through restaurants and adultoriented businesses. So what that basically means is let's say they start uh as part of their education they start teaching uh kids how to be cooks or work in the food service industry they could open up a restaurant down there that the general public can come to if it's managed by the school. Now, it doesn't necessarily mean they can't hire weight staff that might not be affiliated with the school, but the overall thing is it's supposed to be student geared education. So, that's just one example. Um, your dimensional and development standards, it's pretty basic for a property of that size. We're also looking for them to have a campus master plan requirement. And I'm not aware of us having that anywhere else in our zoning code where we're telling an entity, and this is common in zoning codes. Don't get me wrong. We didn't invent the wheel here. We're just recommending that we incorporate it. when you start thinking about all the stuff they want to do, we might want to be able to see that in a master plan that says, "What do you think you're going to do over the next 10 years?" And that plan has to be approved by the town of Rising Sun to say, "All right, you're going in the direction that we think is good for the community at large." And it's not uncommon to see that when you're talking about educational facilities. Um and then the last item is site plan review. This is pretty much a

catchall. Anything they do down there will have to run through our subdivision code in terms of what they can and can't do and how they develop, you know, the development plans for that. Um and then the rest of this ordinance is just simply to renumber the remaining sections of the code. So, in other words, we're taking this educational district and we're planning it right smack in the middle of our of our zoning code. So, we have to we have to bring out that we have to renumber everything going forward. Now, this is gone before the planning commission. Let me double back and remind everybody that under state law, any ch changes to a zoning code or a subdivision code, the planning commission gets a chance to look at it and review it. The planning commission put a lot of work into this and they actually met uh to discuss this on August 18th, September 8th, and September 22nd. So, you're going to see they put a lot of work into this one, too. And their recommendation is this is a good starting point for this educational um zoning district. So, that is going to sit. We're going to schedule a public hearing for that in the future. Um I believe we have to give uh 14 days notice. So, I'll be reaching out to you guys in the next, you know, couple of days to say when do you think is a good time for you guys to be able to meet. So, that's 202503. Um, if you guys want to make a motion to accept that into the minutes so we can start that clock. Can I get a motion to approve ordinance 2025-03 for introduction? I second it. It's been moved and seconded. Any discussion? Hearing none. All in favor?

I. Thank you. Town administrator. Ordinance 2025-04. Okay. So, this one here is pretty much a straightforward one here in that in the in the entire time I've been with Rising Sun going back to 2007. We've handled probably about seven or eight dayc care special exceptions and variances because our zoning code when it was written is incredibly more strict than what the crowbar regulations are for daycarees. So what the planning and and it it really creates a bad situation because you are having folks who want to open up a daycare in their home or you remember some wonderful daycare facilities that have opened up in some of the commercial locations here. They are paying for variances that we pretty much know we're going to grant because the planning commission over the years has said, "Wow, that's really restrictive." And so why should we be in a position of charging them fees for something that probably 99 times out of a hundred we're going to approve? So, we want to change the regulation to bring it in line with the Komar regulations because at the end of the day, I think it might be the Department of Education. I'm not sure which one does, but they regulate these daycare facilities. And so, if they're going to issue the license on some of the things that I'm talking about, why do we need to be so significantly more strict? So, let me show you where those areas are. So basically what I did to make it easier so you could follow is you're going to see the changes I I made or the planning commission made are very

dimminimous in terms of how farreaching they are. But I thought it would be better instead of just saying we're going to add these words to this sentence, I would delete the entire section as it's written now, reintroduce it in here, showing you what is new language identified and read language that's been uh eliminated with the striketh through and language that's remaining to be, you know, normal there. So, what you're going to see is that when it talks to item number C, the applicant shall provide 100 square feet of usable outdoor recreational area for each child. The state only requires 75 square feet. So, what that basically is saying is that when under the daycare regulations, you have to have recreational areas for the children, whether you're running it out of your home or if you're running it out of a non-residential entity. Ours said 100 75 is what the state requires. So, we're recommending that we match the state requirement, drop it from 100 to 75. We also want to make clear that and this is common sense that this calculation shall be based on the maximum number of children outdoors simultaneously not total enrollment. So what that means is you can get some daycare facilities that might have 100 200 kids in it. We're going to no adult in their right mind is going to want to deal with 200 little kids running around in a recreational area there. So they're going to put them out in in segments of 30, 40, 50, 60 kids at a time. All we're saying is that 75 square feet is only needed for the number of kids that are out there at one time, not the total

enrollment. And that's common sense. The state regulations say that, but we wanted to make sure that our documents said that also. And then um the other thing that got really interesting is that I introduced item F that is talking about the minimum amount of let's call it elbow room. When you have the kids in a room and if you look at the size of this room here, if somebody were opening up a daycare here, the state would say the elbow room has to be 35 square feet per child in this room. But we didn't have anything that was clear about the intent of talking about the inside of a room. All we had was the area of the property shall contain no less than a th00and square feet. So we were were left with no choice but to say that if this room is not a thousand square feet, you can in our code be permitted to have a daycare for a child in here. And so over the years there's always been a variance given for that because everybody has said, "Well, that's pretty strict. Let's give the variance." So all we're saying is let's match what the state requirement says, but let's word it so it matches it. So basically what we're saying in a new item F is each child care center shall provide a minimum of 35 square feet of usable indoor activity space per child exclusive of kitchens, bathrooms, halls, staff rooms, and storage areas. So that's new language. And then that old item G, we are saying let's get rid of it for two reasons. Number one, the state is not worried about the size of somebody's property. They're worried about how close the kids

are in an activity area and then how close they are inside of an area. They're not regulating the size of the property. Furthermore, our code said the property has to be a minimum of a thousand square feet. The lowest amount of property we allow in our town is 5,000 with some exceptions for 3,000. So we don't even have any properties in our town that are only a thousand square feet of a taxable property. So there's no need to have that in here as long as they are meeting the outdoor recreational area in the indoor elbow area. So that concludes the recommendations being made by the planning commission. Again, if you guys would accept that into the minutes, um we can start the clock on that. And again, the planning commission met three different times to work on that language. All right, ladies and gentlemen, could you uh could I get a motion to approve ordinance 2025-04? So moved. Second. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor? I. Thank you. Moving forward into 2025-05. So this one here, this is a the same as West Ningham Academy. We want to create a new zoning designation. And we've talked about this off and on for the last couple of years. The town of Rising Sun has been working diligently in partnerships with the Plumping Park Zoo. and we are in negotiations now to annex the Puppet Park Zoo into the town of Rising Sun for the purposes of be being able to provide utilities to them. Now, it's important to note that the Plumped Park Zoo in the past has had a problem with nitrates. It's also important to note that the

Plumped Park Zoo is immediately adjacent to the Southern States situation. And what do we know about the Southern State situation? There are 17 properties that have had a nitrate contamination going back to 2009. And so Plumpton Park Zoo is now dealing with nitrates which creates a problem to some degree for their animals but also the general public who comes in. And when we think about what the effect of nitrates is, nitrates typically affect uh adolescent kids and seniors. The rest of us pretty much don't really have a significant cause and effect on nitrates. Meaning if we have nitrates in the water in our home wells and we're washing our hands, it might not really have an impact on us. But if you have small children, which is who is the number one person that's attracted to zoos is small children. And so they want to get out of this danger zone of nitrates. Now, they have done things to to solve those nitrates by taking them out of the water, but it's very costly. So, if they annex into the town of Rising Sun, it's easier for us to give them water and sewer to solve those public safety issues. But more importantly, by annexing them into the town of Rising Sun, they can come under our designation as a sustainable community, which means a whole plethora of state grants opens up for us to be able to help facilitate the success and growth of the Plumpton Park Zoo. In addition to that, because they annex into the town of Rising Sun, they can also become part of um our DNR, Department of Natural Resources. So,

when you think about the grant money we got in the past for Veterans Park and the dog park, we can now secure those types of grant monies. And the way we're going to do that is we are tenatively negotiating with the Pluffton Park Zoo to enter into a public private partnership and the uh Maryland Zoo is an example of a public private partnership. There are other zoos around the country that are public private partnerships. And so when we enter into a public private partnership, it enables us to create more financial opportunities for them. In addition, as part of our public private partnership, they would come under the umbrella of our park and recreation. So here are some examples of how that can benefit the town as a whole. If you're a town resident, we could, as part of our park and recreation program, provide you discounted tickets to take your family to the Plumpton Park Zoo. So whether it's a one-day pass, a weekend pass, an annual pass, whatever, because you're a town resident and it becomes part of the town of Rising Sun, we can um we can provide additional park and recreational services to our residents through our affiliation and partnership with the zoo. I think it's also very important to say this that in in an effort to create a public private partnership, we are not setting up something where our elected body is going to determine how to feed a giraffe. That's not the intent of this. The intent is to let the experts who run the zoo run the zoo and we're going to provide peripheral things for them. It's another example we're talking about is

we are always under a lot of pressure from solar panel companies to build solar panels and they always talk about eliminating or reducing our electric bills. If Pluffton Park Zoo comes under our umbrella, we can reduce if not eliminate all of their electric bill because they would be viewed as Veterans Park. Triangle Park is being a park of the town of Rising Sun and then Plumpton Park would just become another park. So there's all kinds of wonderful opportunities for the two to work together. I'll leave you with this in regards to that. It has been documented economically that for every $1 of economic revenue that's created uh every amount for every $1 of investment in a zoo generates $7 of economic development. So what that means is a family going to the zoo wanting to get lunch, get dinner, do something. They're coming into the town of Rising Sun. They're they're driving through the town of Rising Sun. So there's an economic driver that gets created by having a zoo within your umbrella. So as always, we're doing a lot of this stuff to help a lot of different people at the same time. So, in looking at this zoo ordinance, it's the same thing that we're doing with West Nodingham Academy. They are right now a legal nonconforming use where they're at now. And they often run into problems when they want to do like different exhibits that they're not located in a zoning area in the county that allows them to do that as a use by

rights. and it slows everything down and it causes uh more financial impact. When we create a new zoning district, there will be things that will be permitted as a use by rights and that's what this zoning ordinance does. So, we're talking about zoological parks, animal habitats, veterinarian clinics, administrative offices and staff operations, public amenities, visitors centers, cafeterias, cafes, gift shops, educational um educational in interpretive centers, yearround educational partnerships, all these things. they will have a a better runway to be able to make those investments and grow that zoo for the benefit of the region as a whole. It's also important to note that right now the Plumpton Park Zoo attracts over a 100,000 people to the zoo every year. Cecil County only has about 104,000 people in the total population. So that shows you the impact of people from coming from Pennsylvania, Delaware, or whatever, they're coming to this zoo here. And so by helping to enhance it, maybe there's 150,000, 200,000 people coming to the zoo here. Um, so there's all kinds of things that they can do that are geared towards the mission of the zoo. There's accessory uses that they can do and structures in here. There's things that they can do by special exception. So, one of them would be where we would allow them to build an amphitheater of up to 199 people. What do I mean by that? If you've ever gone, one time I went to a zoo in Florida and

they had an exhibit where they were showing, you know, a Steve Owen type person sticking his hand in an alligator's mouth and all the stuff they do. Well, you sat in an amphitheater to do that. So, we're going to allow them as a use by right to build that amphitheater up to 199. But if they want to get up over 200, then there's a tipping point where you need to start thinking about the overall impact of the area, the roads, the parking, how are you going to address that? So, just like any other project, like a tractor supply that's coming to the town, they get to come before the planning commission and we get to work together to make sure what they want to do doesn't have an overall negative impact on the community. So, those are the types of things that we're listing as a use by uh special exception. And a lot of the rest of it is all the common stuff that you're going to see in any other zoning district of the height of fences and uh how the site plan has to be done. So that is the um the ordinance 2025 if you want to accept that into the minutes and we've had over the years many conversations about our niche and what that's going to be. Uh we continue to hope that we'll have a a good relationship with the zoo and this will move forward at some point. Uh ordinance 2025-05. Could I get a motion? So moved. I second it. It's been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion hearing? None. All in favor? I I. Thank you. Moving forward into 2025-06. All right. So, in this particular document here, um

what what we're doing is making changes to chapter 8 of our um of our town code. And in chapter 8, there there are things that we did a couple years ago were sitting on a million gallons of water. And it is a huge commodity that a lot of people would like to command and maybe even manipulate to their own advantage. And we want to put guard rails up so that stuff cannot happen. The other thing is in thinking about the fire company and water capacity and issues like that, we have land development projects that are building houses that if you want to think about it being at the end of a tree branch and if something happens along that tree BL branch, there's going to be problems at the end of the branch. meeting. If you have a five a two 300 home subdivision that's essentially sitting at the end of a dead end main, you can have problems if you ever have an interruption of your water supply. So we have language in our code already that talks about those types of things having to be interconnected when possible so that if somebody's coming along and building a development they have to bring another source of water into that development so it's fed from at least two different directions. So that's an example of the language um that we are putting in there. Um, if you remember in the past we did all kinds of updates to this code talking about uh recognized standards of

it. Quite frankly, we have some people who would rather us not have that language in there because it costs money. And that's just the nature of the development community. And that's one of the things we've always said to the development community is we're not handling land development in the town of Rising Sun the way it was able to be done 20 years ago. We've learned from those mistakes and so things have to be done our way and for the benefit of the community as a whole. So those are the some of the changes that we're making in this particular um ordinance 20256 there. So again if you that is not something um if you accept that we don't have to have a public hearing for this. We can just come back at our next meeting and you guys can adopt it if you like it. All right. Ordinance 2025-06. Could I get a motion to approve? So moved. I second it. It's been moved and seconded. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none. We only have three left. Cal. Yes. 2025-07. Do you have that? Yes. So this one here is changes to article four of chapter nine of our town code. And within the town code in article four, it talks about adequate public facilities, benefit assessment, and impact fees. These concepts have been around forever. And basically what this this ordinance sets out to do and every community basically has this is that and I'm going to say it to you this way and have a little fun with it is that as a town if you're just minding your own business and you got plenty of

water and you don't have any problems with your sewer and you might have some rainwater leaking into the sewer system but it's not really raising the alarm of any of the regulatory agencies. you can go along and continue to operate that way. But when a developer comes along and says, "Hey, I want a piece of the action and I want to develop in your community." If they are doing things that are going to exasperate those particular items, then they either have to fix them outright themselves or they have to pay you an impact fee or a benefit assessment fee. And so that language has always been in our code. However, one of the things we realized, and I'm going to give you a little bit of history, we had issues in the past where we had developers that were paying impact fees to the town of Rising Sun. We're talking 20, 25 years ago. They were they were buying they were paying impact fees and then they were turning around and selling those connections to other developers at a higher cost. Say they were taking our commodity and selling it to somebody else. That's not fair. That's owned by the residents of the town of Rising Sun. And so this ordinance is going to eliminate that. The other thing that comes into play is you get a developer who has big aspirations on what they want to do, but they don't want to s sign the deal to buy the property until they know they have enough capacity. So they ask the town to say there's enough capacity. Well, there in the past there's been no time limit on how long that capacity is

in place. So you can get a developer that 20, 25 years later has not developed their property, but they're still sitting on that commodity. So I want to give you the flip of that because you guys can appreciate this. Augie, you especially if you remember when we were negotiating with Chester Water, they wanted to have a a take or pay. In other words, when they were going to say, "Yeah, we're going to allocate that water to you, but you have to use it within five years or whatever or you have to start paying for it." And so that's what we always said. We don't want to pay for imaginary water. So, we did some really good negotiations with Chester Water and we eliminated that taker pay and we only pay for the water that our residents use. Well, this is sort of the same situation. You have a developer who says, I want to have 600 edus set aside for me and towns will give that to them and 15 or 20 years later it's not used and you can't even sell that to somebody else. And so this code is creating a new section called sewer and water capacity reservation agreements. And so in that scenario, you have a developer who wants to spend millions of dollars to buy a piece of property to develop it, but they want us to make them feel comfortable that there's going to be capacity there. And so we created a capacity reservation agreement that says we'll reserve that for you, but you're going to pay a reservation capacity fee. So in this particular case, you're going to pay 2% of the total amount of impact

fee that has to be paid and you're going to pay that upfront. So if you want 600 EDUs, but 2% of the impact fee is too rich, will then reserve a 100 .edus out of that. And so it puts the risk in their court to figure out how they want to mitigate that. but it doesn't compromise the town of Rising Sun in giving up commodity and having it locked into play. So in that scenario, they would they would deposit 2% of the total impact fee for the number of units that they want to reserve, but they have five years to do something with that. and they have to have 25% of their project done within five years or it goes away and they don't get the money back. So, if you're going to come in, and I'm going to say it to you this way, if you're going to come in before our planning commission and our elected body and say, "Man, we got this great project. You're going to love this." And they fall flat on their face. We're eliminating the risk to the town of Rising Sun by basically saying, "Put your money where your mouth is at and so pay that reservation fee." Now, when you're dealing with a large project, five years might not be enough time to get from A to Z through the N. So, in that particular case, you can go before the planning commission, which is not unusual, and divide your land development project into phases. So, if you're trying to do 600 units and you say, "I want to do that in six phases, but I'm not going to be able to get it all done in five years." Well, now you're going to pay a capacity reservation fee. And now you're going to

pay um another percentage on top of that to now reserve that so that it'll be in place for your phases going forward. But again, you only have 10 years to complete that phase. And so it's it's creating uh you know, a stepbystep process in which they can mitigate their risk, but we don't bear any more risk than is necessary. So that's what this is here is creating a neighboring language. Now, let me say this. The town of Rising Sun can enter into just about any kind of agreement it wants. But when you start talking about land development projects, you can get hung up when somebody wants to drag you into court on a multi-million dollar project. And one of our projects is estimated to be about $500 million of investment. So when I see somebody investing 500 million, that's 500 million reasons to take somebody to courts and try to sue them. And so what we want to do is put the town in a better position to weather that by saying we didn't just come up with this agreement willy-nilly. It's in our code. It's enabling language to allow it in the code. So, it's just another way we put guard rails up to protect our residents in in here. And so, that's why we're showing this water capacity reservation fee language to be put in chapter 9, article 4 of our town code. So, if you're good with that, we can start the clock on uh looking at that and approving that at a future meeting. All right. Ordinance 2025-07.

Can I get a motion to approve? I make a motion to approve 2025-07 ordinance. Seconded. It's been moved and seconded. Any other discussion? All in favor? I. All right, Cal. So, the next one we have is an actual sewer and water capacity reservation agreements that we are getting ready. We've already sent it to the developer. The attorneys are going back and forth. We've hammered out a lot of stuff. It matches what is in our zoning code or in in our code that you would be adopting in the future. But we want to start using this type of an agreement because and here's here I I want to describe it to you this way is that if you ever picture somebody running like a 1500 meter race on a on a high school track college track you will have let's say five runners lined up on the track but the guy who's on the inside lane has an advant advantage because it's shorter to get to the other side when you're on the inside lane. And so when you see the starting block, the guy who's on the outside lane is usually further up in the starting block. And so think of those runners as developers. And here's why this is important. The next thing I'm going to show you is that yes, we're minding our own business, doing fine, and now we have the development community that wants to do things where there are impact fees that are going to have to be paid. What is common for a developer to do is to say, well, I don't care about the other developers. I'm here now. You have

capacity. I want I don't want to have to pay anything towards that. Now that's not really a winning argument. But what we have done is that we have created the optic of all of these developers are in a 1500 meter race and the developer that's further along is on the inside track and the developer that is just now coming into the queue is on the outside and they've got a longer way to get to the other side. But once they get to the other side, they're essentially going to be neck andneck with the other developers. What I mean by that is once you get through final land development approval, it takes about a year for a developer to move dirt around, put roads in, put pipes in the ground. And so that gives everybody an opportunity to catch up. And so by taking this position, we don't run the risk of the first developer getting the benefit of everything and paying nothing towards the impacts that are going to occur down the road. and the last developer coming in foots the entire bill. And what that means is that if it becomes cost prohibitive on one hand, hey, maybe it's great they don't get to develop, but there's also a thing called landowners rights. And that's where when you have property in your community, we've talked about it. If you've zoned it, you've alluded to the fact that you're going to provide water and sewer. So you don't get to just throw your hands up and say there's no water and sewer. Sucks to be you. You can't you can't do that. And so by creating this the way we're doing, we're we're taking those runners on a track and we're treating them all as equals. And by getting them to commit to

a water capacity reservation makes them back up their talk with the walk of putting money up. So if they want to say, "Hey, I'm ready to go." Then make the 2% contribution to the impact fee and then that that will get you further along or that will get you where you want to be. Otherwise, it's just lip service saying that we should give it to you because you're at a certain point. We'll put your money up there. So that's that's this agreement here has everything that I talk about. It's been gone through by our attorney. He's looked at it. There's a couple little tweaks going back and forth. And what I'm asking the board to do, which is what I emailed the other night, is for you to authorize and and in our town code, it allows the mayor andor myself to execute contracts without necessarily bringing a contract back to the elected body. In this particular case, we want to say if you're comfortable with it and the town attorney signs off on it, do we have permission to enter into this agreement? One caveat, we're not going to sign it until that developer comes up with the 2%. So that could be a week later, it could be six months from now, but we don't have any risk in it. We're just asking you if you have a comfort level that if the town attorney signs off on the legal ease, then we can go ahead and execute the contract. Okay. All right. Can I get a motion to approve that? I make a motion to approve the sewer and water capacity reservation agreement. Then I second it. It's been moved and seconded. Only discussion point is obviously I don't

make any moves without either one of you and your consultation as always. Uh all in favor I thank you. Moving forward into resolution 2025-18 the last. So this is one that's Auggie. I know this makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up because we've had to deal with these kinds of things off and on over the years. And so it is what the impact fees are going to be and the adequate public facility fees and what they're going to be. And Auggie knows that back in like 2011 or so, we hired a third-party company to come in and do a benefit assessment fee study. and it came back and said that every developer should have to pay $32,000 for every .edu. That's a non-starter. Nothing's going to happen when you're paying $32,000 per edu. It's cost prohibitive, especially in this region. So, at that time, the elected body threw a bunch of things out and said, "Well, we can sort of kick the can down the road." And some of those things we were able to solve through grant monies like a new water line, new water supply, getting away from the wells, fixing the wastewater treatment plant, you know, through uh financing there. So, we were able to lower the impact fee at that time to $19,600, which was still a little bit on the high end of that time of an impact fee. And then when you remember when we were able to finally move forward with the Chester water line and the wastewater treatment plant, when we hired a third party company to come in and determine what

the sewer water rates should be, we got very aggressive and said, "We're going to charge rates that are not dependent upon any development because at the end of the day, the Maryland Department of the Environment was threatening to find us a whole boatload of money if we didn't fix a wastewater treatment plant. And so we were going to have to fix it whether there was development or not. And then we also had to solve our water capacity issue because we didn't have enough water. And people that have been here long enough remember when we had to go in the drought restrictions and we had to get the fire companies to truck water in from other communities to fill the tank. We were able to resolve that also over the years. And so when we finally solved that, we just reduced our impact fees down to $14,000 to try to jumpstart. But the important thing is we didn't count on any development because we didn't want to go to the residents with a high water and sewer rate and say, "Hey, trust us. There's going to be development down the road." And then when the development doesn't happen, which is outside of our control, we're coming back to the residents with another significant water and sewer increase. So, we did calculations with no development. Well, now we have the development. So, every new property we bring in is potential to bring down water and sewer rates and make it more cost effective for our residents. So, we also have to figure out what the benefit assessment fees are going to be. And so what I have in front of me and and I you don't have it in front of you is we basically have looked

at our water upgrades and our sewer upgrades needed. And on our water upgrades there are two things that the engineering firm and doing a study and this is important. We used our engineering firm to figure this out as opposed to going to a third party. And the reason why we did it is when you hire a third party for 40, 50, $60,000, guess who's the first phone call they make to the engineer. And so you're paying them to get the information for the engineer. So we just used our engineering firm to come up with what was needed. So there's two things on the water side. Number one, we want right now when you look at the Chester water line coming in, everything that is down on Pearl Street in that direction is essentially on its own water grid. And so remember what I talked about redundancy and water coming in from two sides where you have a water grid on that side of town and a water grid on this side of town. What we want to do is run the water run a water line basically from Pearl Street down to Triangle Park to connect to the Chester water line that's coming up Walnut Street. So we we will have an amazing redundant system in our community. If a water mane breaks, we don't have to shut off widespread water. If the fire company has a large fire, they're not trying to draw water out of the same grid. So, we definitely want to do that. And with more development occurring, it's all the more reason why we need to do that. The other thing we want to do is when you under MDE and 10 states standards, you have to

have a day worth of water in reserve. And right now we have a 500,000galon water tank. However, we have a millon allocation from Chester Water in the Sesuana River Basin Commission. So if we're going to start selling this water to other developers or in the area, we need additional water tanks. And so that's an example of we're minding your own business. We don't need another water tank. You want to develop, we need more water tanks. So there's a cost associated with that. And then on the sewer side, in order to get the capacity that we need at the wastewater treatment plant, we have to do some things at the plant. The biggest problems we have, and this is this is revisiting history that you've heard before, but it all comes together, is at our wastewater treatment plant after we opened it up, we found out that we had an I we had an underground spring and that underground spring goes into the lagoon and it threatens it or to overflow. So on a regular basis, we have to pump about 200,000 gallons of lagoon water back into the wastewater treatment plant, which means that's 200,000 gallons that we can't provide to somebody else. And so we have to solve that. We also have to decommission our lagoon. MDE did a great favor for us back when we were building our wastewater treatment plant and they said, "You don't have to decommission your lagoon." So that meant that we could process the sludge at the wastewater treatment plant and dump it into the lagoon. Well, if we're going to have more development coming in, MD is not going to allow us to continue to do that. So, we have to decommission the lagoon. When we decommission the lagoon, we have to build a belt filter press

building. So, that's an example of what we have to do there. The total price of doing that is $8 million. We also have two interceptor lines. And what interceptor lines are is when you look at all the homes throughout the town of Rising Sun. They the water goes down the drain, goes through the yard, goes into a sewer line in the street, and that sewer line goes into what is called an interceptor. And the town has two interceptor lines that all the properties flow into. Well, those interceptor lines are not large enough. one of them is not large enough to handle the capacity of development. So there again, we're minding our own business. You don't have enough capacity to develop. So you not you have to put a larger water or sewer line in there. The other problem with it is back in the day engineers used to think it was a great idea to put your interceptor lines in a stream bed. And so you have all the hydraulics of the water pressure seeping water in the terracotta pipe. And the other thing is when they designed wastewater treatment lines 40 50 60 years ago they said well let's deal with the flooding in the area by allowing the water to seep into the joints and that's why they use terracotta pipe. Well, all that I ini goes into your wastewater treatment plant and that technology can't handle it. So, we have to replace the interceptor lines to get rid of the INI. So, with all that said, we are creating an impact fee that's going to be about $21,000 per connection for each developer to be able to come in and develop. and they're going to do the inner looping of the

water system for redundancy. They're going to they're going to help build two 200,000galon water towers. They're going to make the repairs at wastewater treatment plant. They're going to deal with the two interceptor lines and they're also going to help us deal with INI of water leaking in the manholes and illegal connections in residential homes of sump pumps. So, at the end of the day, this development is going to result in all these developers having to pay impact fees. Remember what I said about the water capacity reservation fee? That's where that ties in. At the end of the day, the town is looking to receive about $28 million of impact fees to go towards this these developments. It's also by law we are allowed to recoup the expenses that were paid towards the wastewater treatment plant and the water lines in the past. What that means is that a developer doesn't get the benefit of what our taxpayers paid for to be able to even think about doing development. So, of the $21,000 fee, 14,000 of it is the impact fees that we were charging to help offset all the money our taxpayers had to spend to build the wastewater treatment plant and to get the water line in here. So if you remember three days ago when I started this presentation here, I was talking about how this all ties together here and it's been a long process. But what the final thing we need to do is KCI the engineer is finishing up their report that's going to have this stuff and then

we're going to change our fee schedule to have those impact fees and benefit assessment fees put it on the books and then the town is going to be in a position like I said for long-term sustainability going forward as a result of 15 some odd years of a lot of hard work and and just trying to keep focus on the uh keep an eye on the ball here. So, thank you. Could I get a motion to approve resolution 2025? No, there's no resolution. I'm just introducing that to you at So, it's going to sit. Yes. Okay. All right. Moving forward into staff reports. Town administrator. Yeah. I don't have anything to add. I'm good. Assistant, excuse me, chief. Okay. I'm going to be brief. Ah, don't do that. A couple things. Um, after receiving a lot of the social media request, the pleasant request we get from Ed about the uh traffic along Main Street, I've reached out to the state and uh we're looking to increase the amount of signage for the crosswalk areas um in the area of the middle school. In addition, uh we look to designate them school zones, which change the fine schedules for those areas when uh when enforcement is done during the the enforcement hours. Um with that being said, our newest candidate is still in a police academy. He's doing very well. Um knock on wood, say a few prayers. He his next seven months go quickly. Um, and we're still in a search for more. And that is all I have for a report unless you have any questions. Thank you, Chief. Assistant town administrator. I do have financials, but I'm not going

to go over them individually. I did put a pack at each of your stations. If you look, you will see that uh the general fund seems to be overperforming, but that is because of real estate tax. We get frontended with those payment. Um couple of things. We have the Civil War reenactment that's going to start this week. It starts Thursday. Um with setup, it goes through Saturday. Well, they actually tear down on Sunday to have a dinner on Saturday. Um we have completed a lot of interviews for public works. We are still interviewing. If you know someone who's looking for a position, they can send their resume to to receptionist at rising sunmd.org uh to be considered. One other thing, James, I know you know because I sent you guys emails, we are having a problem with graffiti again at the park and it's very expensive to get it removed. So, if you can help us out in any way, that would be great. That's it for me. So, thank you. Thank you. We do not have a town attorney's report. My report is pretty brief. Uh the chief and I have visited along with the town administrator uh different schools that represent our names. Uh I continue to have visits monthly with them. We recently stopped by the Rising Sun Middle School to present a check on behalf of our elected body to help with their incentive program for the students. Uh it's a great program that encourages them uh to not only be well behaved but reach high remarks and uh we're excited to support that. We recently uh joined the elected body and members of the Rising Sun Chamber of Commerce at the new opening of Rising Sun Market. Uh it's a great little shop uh right down past uh the St. Agnes Church. Uh I encourage everyone to check it out. It has a lot of great homemade goods as well as different fall decorations. Uh just a wonderful addition to our community. Uh moving

forward with our mural wall. Many of you have seen that it is fully uh repaired. It looks great. We're waiting for that 30-day period for the uh Stuckco to cure and then we will be also uh accepting bids. We just finished up the bid process on on the mural. Uh and once uh that comes back, we'll be choosing someone to start uh the artwork. Uh so we're excited about that as well. Uh moving forward into commissioner comments. Uh Commissioner Kleiner. Um most of my report is covered or was covered by Calvin with the um ordinances for the educational cultural campus, the daycare and childcare zoning and the um conservation zoological park district. Um those are things that we've been working on consistently with the planning commission and um I very much enjoyed the ribbon cutting at the new Rising Sun Market and um highly recommend the chicken salad if you go. Um but um that concludes my report. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Kleiner. Commissioner Pearson, uh just a reminder, school's back in session. Watch out for kids on the sidewalks and crosswalks, please. That's all I have. Thank you. On the agenda, you'll see our uh board of zoning appeals schedule as well as upcoming town events. I don't want to miss announcing that our spooktacular is scheduled for Saturday, October the 11th. We are super excited for that. Uh last year we had over 5,000 people that came into our community. Uh it is a wonderful fall free event for uh those not only that live in town but also live outside of town. We have a lot of folks that come and travel. Uh you'll also see uh upcoming holidays and our trash recycling and yardway schedule. Is there anything else to come before the board this evening? Not yet. I will entertain a motion to adjurnn. Motion. It's it's been moved and seconded. All in favor? Hi

I meeting adjourned. Thank you.