>>> good morning, everyone. It's
january
22nd and we're starting our planning
board
meeting. The first item this morning
is
adoption of a resolutions. The first
three
all can vote on
except commissioner hedrick and those
three
are willgis to north
park site plan, preliminary plan and
forest conservation plan, these are
all
resolutions. Do I have a motion for
approval.
>> I move to approve these
resolutions.
>> all in favor. >> yea. >> yea.
>> yeas have it
4-0-1. I want to
mention commissioner linden is virtual.
the
next is approval of minutes. All commissioners
can vote.
three this morning, the minutes of
january 8th,
the minutes of january 15th and the
closed session minutes
of january 15th. Do I have a motion
for approval of these three
board minutes?
>> move to approve
the minutes.
>> I second. >> all in
favor yea.
>> yeas have it 5-0. Next other
preliminary matters. This
is the
mpf --montgomery
parks foundation board new nominee
brooks hanson,
staff is recommending approval of
mr.
hanson's addition to the board.
do I have a motion for approval.
>>
I move
to approve.
>>
I second.
>> all in favor. >> yea.
>> yea.
>> yeas have it 5-0.
the next we have three record plats this
morning. Where staff
is recommending all three to be approved.
the first subdivision plat
2-2025-90 bradley hill
section hill. Second plat number
2-2026-0330, section
3 chevy chase and the last subdivision
plat
2-2026-0450 stratmore view. Do I have
approval
of these three plats.
>> move to approve
the
record plats.
>> second. >> all in
favor.
>> yea. >> yea. >>
the yeas have it. 5-0. The
next we have our roundtable
discussion with parks director. Welcome.
director?
>> good morning. Thank
you. So for today's park's director
roundtable we
are going to do a little
bit of a athleticathletic field program
overview. It's one of
our recurring
occasional roundtable
takeovers. So
I'm going hand this over to our
athletic field program manager so they
can give
you an overview.
>> good morning.
>> good morning. >> for the record
matt folden
park implementation planning. Pleased to
be
here this morning to share information
about our athletic field system and
just
the overall impressive
size, variety
and quality of the system. I had
the privilege this morning of being
here with mr. Carl weber and this
is his first presentation to the planning
board. Carl has over
22 years of experience in
turf management including 13 years
with montgomery parks. The first ten
years of his
service at parks were spent in
operations where he was responsible for
the specialized care and management
of
our athletic fields and for the last
three years he's been on the additive
side of
the department focused on the strategies
and policies associated with athletic
fields.
carl has a degree in crop and soil
environmental
science with a focus in turf
management from virginia tech and
in his spare
time he's a youth soccer coach. He's
truly
an expert on all sides related
to athletic fields. Actually, sorry [ inaudible
]. Thank you. The purpose of the presentation
this morning is just to
familiarize the board with our athletic
field system ahead of
the upcoming discussion on the athletic
field
use policy on february
5 and during the discussion we'll
provide an overview on
how exceptional our park and
athletic field system is and touch on
the capacity
issues we face with the athletic field
and conclude withwith questions and
discussion. As we get started
here I want to emphasize the
importance of the 2022 plan and with regard
to athletic
fields, pros direct staff to support
physical
activity by providing a variety of
athletic fields that
feel welcoming for all.
athletic fields fulfill two of three
themes
of pros which include physical activity and
social connectivity
and with that it's my pleasure to
turn it over to carl.
>> for
the record my name is carl
webber, for montgomery parks and our
planning
and stewardship division. Today I'm
representing a
large staff that work on athletic
fields in montgomery parks
anywhere from cutting the grass to
planning new
athletic fields. We have two operations divisions
that do all of
our general maintenance operations
on our fields
and we have an in-house athletic field
renovation team. We have
a park development division that does all
of our
athletic field construction, park
project managers, construction
managers and inspectors. Permit office
that works
on per milting our athletic
fields and work with our youth groups
and support staff our
gis and data team help us a lot with
our planning of
athletic fields. How do we invest
all this staff into athletic fields.
because we're trying to achieve
our mission of providing areas for
physical activity and social connectivity
to our communities. We all
know the benefits of physical activity you
have better physical
health, better mental health, and
it's
with students proven to be better
for
academic achievement.
getting social skills for our communities
at an
age where everybody is glued to screens
it's great to get
outout socialize with your friends
and other community members.
. We track our trends so team sports
have increased by 2. 5% last
year to and all time
high, so team sports are growing and
we have to
be cognizant of that and provide
that opportunity four our communities.
I'm going to talk about our system
and thank jane our
research and data planner for these
maps
you'll see today but we have 312 athletic
fields throughout our system and we
offer a wide range of fields.
we have a lot of
rectangle, softball a lot of baseball
fields and we have eight
cricket fields in our community, too.
if you look
at the map a lot of our field are
down county
and east county along
the 270 corridor.
we don't have anything in the
municipalities. Of those 312 fields we
have
some fields what we call overlay fields
at 35
sites. It's where when we were planning
we didn't have enough room
or we wanted to save some space
and, you know, kind of have one
area share space
with --so we have two fields that
share a space. In this diagram you
can see you can
play softball or soccer.
so although we have 312 fields and
only
have one time only 279 can be permanent at one time.
. We're going to be talk about capacity
throughout
this presentation and one way we can
increase capacity is through lighting
the fields. You can see
them with the
yellow indication. We are installing lights
at damascus and we will be adding
to more. We have, you know, we have
28
fields we can permit after it
goes. That's an important feature once
it goes and especially in
the fall we
only have 28 opportunities for
outdoor athletics. We have
27 irrigated fields. This helps with
our maintenance. It
helps with regrowing of the grass.
it's
very beneficial for the
quality of our fields.
so we divide our fields
up into different
classifications. We have any classifications.
we have our practice game field, game-only
fields and synthetic turf fields.
practice game fields are our most
abundant fields
and typically in our local parks.
they are lower end maintenance because we
have so many of
them. You can permit
them for practices or games. They can
be used with aa or walk on
and use them. They are our most economical
field at $10 an hour.
our game-only fields
receive a higher end maintenance,
they're typically in a
regional recreational parks, they're
for game only and they do require
permit to use. They're
typically fenced and they are slightly
more expensive
at $20 an hour.
then we have our
year-round synthetic
turf fields.
grooming, texting. You can permit them
for practices
ar games. They require permits. All
of our synthetic turf fields are lighted.
and they
are more expensive at $110 an hour.
>> I will talk more about our
maintenance standards and what we
try to achieve every
year with our maintenance staff. So we
have a high maintenance
standard that we try to achieve, and this
is a
big undertaking for
312 fields.
we sometimes have trouble reaching
this undertaking because of
weather and staffing issues but these
are high
expectations we set for ourselves.
as you can see our game only fields
get
higher maintenance
than our practice only fields with
mowing and field
maintenance and lighting. We do cultural
practices with aeration which helps
water and
air get to the root system.
overseeding which helps with turf
density.
nutrient management that help feed
the plants so they can recover from wear and tear and
grow better.
they get
a lot of use. We
had in 2024 over 134,000 hours of
permits.
that's averaging over two
hours of field per day over our
nine-month season that's a lot of
hours.
we're averaging
431 hours across all of our fields.
our practice game fields get 400 hours of
use
of permits. Game-only fields with
lights are
averaging close to 500. When we
add lights to our game-only
fields that increases close to 900
hours. Our
year-
round synthetic turf fields get
00 hours of permit play. One thing
we
don't capture is walk on
play which are practice game fields you
see and we've done
camera studies that say there is a
substantial amount of walk on play on
our fields. Even
though her on the end of permitting
hours
they support walk on play which is
a
contributor to our communities. We
also
have a lot of users. Here's a small sampling
of
our users. We have a lot
of government
agencies which isis county recreation
which we work with. We have montgomery
county public schools
and large organizations and small
organizations that
provide recreation to our community.
we have a lot
of long established leagues and a lot
of start-up leagues.
in 2024 we had
over 700 accounts permit
times with us. From individuals to
groups.
third-party stakeholders involved
in sports in
the county. Montgomery county established
the
sports advisory committee over two
years ago and they
are very involved in trying
to create better opportunities for
youth
sports in the county. They're made up
of a
diverse group of 17 members and we've
been working
with them for the past
two years and we look forward to continuing
contributions with them.
as we're going towards the latter part
of
this presentation I do want to talk about
what keeps me up
at night, what are our
problems, what areas do we think we
can improve on. One
thing I think about a lot is
our capacity. And how many hours a
field
can handle.
and I think this is two different
thoughts because I think diamond fields
are different than rectangle fields
and we're going
to talk about capacity and
wear patterns
kind of one in the same and if you
look at a diamond field you
can see the diagram on the
left most of the players are on
the dirt and, you know, there's not
a lot
of wear in the satellite photo because
a lot of the play is on
the dirt. If you mess up the dirt
with a proper machine
in a couple hours you can fix it.
you can see
the wear pattern on the satellite
image and see a little bit of
wear out in front of the dugout, a little
bit of wear from the
pitcher's mound to
home plate,
occasionally you'll get wear in
the outfield where the
outfielders stand. You can see all
22 players are on the field.
this is true for soccer, football,
lacrosse. You
can see there's major
wear problems in the center. And we're
starting
to see this more and more throughout.
our communities
our fields are used more often.
we've had some failures and, you know,
we've renovated
some fields. What we call love to
death.
it's because we have these fields
and
this highly densely communities and
everybody flocks
to them when we open them and they're
just used an awful lot.
so we're studying this because
we want to improve and we know we
can't have this.
this is not what we're striving towards.
we're throwing out
some new ideas and trying some new
things and
we're resting some of our game only
fields during the
week to help let them recover.
we're extending our establishment
period longer
so that maybe the grass has better
time to establish and
really handle the wear.
and then we're also looking at new products and technologies to
better manage our grass.
this brings us
to basically our major case study
which is
hillendale. This is a state-of-the-
art field natural
grass field. We built this with drainage.
irrigation. It's got bermuda grass.
it's
got a sand-based system. This
field was opened in
2024. And that first year got
over 900 hours of permitted
use. So at the
end of 2024, we
determined the field needed to be
renovated.
renovated it southern region in the
spring and summer of 2025,
the picture on the left is the
renvated field. We've been monitoring
it because we want to know what's
going on
and you can see the picture on the
right
november at the end of the season.
it was
open for 79 days. It got
370 hours of permitted play. That's
averaging
about 4. 7 hours
of permitted play a day. We did a
camera study during that
time. It was getting an additional
two hours of walk-on play.
this field was getting close to seven
hours of
play a day. These natural grass fields
are
living systems, right, so they're
just being worn down.
this
one's holding up wellwell and holding
up well because we're going above our
maintenance standards. We're invested
in this field going above our game
level field even though this is a practice
game field. We're committed to this
field but it's just
showing a lot of wear. It's great
to
track it and we're looking forward to opening it in
the spring and seeing what it looks
like and how it held up. It's amazing how much play our
fields get.
that really brings us to
a conclusion here is that
although 98% of our
residents are within a 20-minute drive
of an athletic field how
many people are competing for that
field at one time. This is
a population map and you can
see there's some heat centers of
highly dense populated areas and there's
a lot
of competition for our fields because
there's
a lot of competition for
any space in these parts.
so, you know, this
is where we struggle. So this is why
it's important in the next couple
weeks, february 5th we're going to
come
with you for an athletic permit policy
as we bring to
you a new policy to help permit our
fields and we're looking to bring a donation
policy later on in 2026.
that's all I have. For
questions and thank you for your time.
>> mr. Weber did
a great job. Thank you.
it's very
informative to
know how many we have and the
challenges of maintaining them and
the
demand for them. We look
forward to your policy that's coming
up and just one quick
question. Do you have a
sense of over the next few
years how many fields
will likely come on board that would
add onto the
312 that you have today?
>> a total
number but
we're looking at a couple projects
to add at least a couple more
fields.
>> great. Thank you. Do we
have any questions or
comments from the other board?
>> I have a comment.
>>
so, thank you very much. I know for
fact that --and
I learned it
actually, that turf is a science and
it takes a lot to put to
have a good turf during the
construction. That was one of our
biggest
challenges to get turf.
one thing that I think it would
be interesting for the board members what
is the
cost? It's not
cheap. The cost of
the maintenance and also
construction of these fields. You
know,
you just showed one
example that you renovate how much
it
take, the cost and time,
to
renovate, and, you know, within a
season it
could go down. I totally
understand and that's why I believe
that we
need someone with very expert eyes
to
see that what
are the best practices and maintenance and
operation
to , you
know, get these investments to
go a little bit longer. It
was really eye opening and
interesting to know it's purely a
science. It's very difficult
and extremely difficult and there
are
so many variables not even on our
hand
and I know one of your biggest
variables are the walkers and users
that we
are not tracking. So we really appreciate you
for
you bringing here. It was so nice
to
see you with a different hat back
in here and we miss you on
the other side, but I
think that you are in the right place, and
I'm sure it would
be very rewarding that you have.
if you have some ideas about the costs
if you
could share some information for us.
>>
yeah. I don't have that off the top
of
my head, but it
definitely varies a lot depending
on what level quality of field you
want
to build. I think we spend about a
million dollars to build the
field at hillendale and then
also maintenance varies greatly
too. I would say easily --
>> well,
if I may, I
want to add to
that, as carl just pointed out I think it
was upwards of a million dollars
to renovate that field at hillen dale,
a
local park field,
and it was destroyed within the year.
we are
making every effort to bring the field
back and as carl said, we
are investing a lot to
maintain that field. It is a science
and we put a lot of resources into
this, but I think a point that needs to
be
made and want to emphasize to the
board is
that there is only so much you can do
with . Maintenance of a field. Past
a certain point a field cannot take
the level of play
it's getting. We have the permitted
time, but
we also have the walk-on time on local
park fields. We don't want to restrict
people from
coming on and using the field, but we
have
to recognize there is no amount of
money we could throw at this that
would solve the problem of
just not having
the capacity that we need.
>> exactly.
and I totally understand it is a
living element in the park and it
needs time to breathe. And I do
not know if we have done any kind
of a study to see --
$1 million is a lot of investment
and in one playing season it
goes, and we are
not collecting permit fees to
even cover a small percentage of this
cost
so that is a pressure
to the operating budget
for parks so I
do not know what is
the on mum time for our parks how
many fields we
need to have or other ways
that we could --I do not know if we
have done
that. Is it we have to double our
capacity
or number of fields?
because we cannot keep just increasing
the
usage because nothing is left.
>> that's
correct. We're going to have to look
at
ways to increase the capacity on the
fields that we
currently have. We are trying to add
more
fields. Sometimes it's part of development
projects.
we might get a field, there
might be some other opportunities
to build new fields, but, you
know, there's only so much space
in montgomery county and it's in demand
for a lot of other uses as
you well know. We have to be, I think,
creative in making the best use of
what we have and then also just, you
know,
be willing, as a parks
department,
policymakers, council members, the community
to understand there are
tradeoffs and there's only so much
that we
can
do with what we have.
>> actually, commission pedoeem covered
a couple things I
was going to ask about particularly
on --what is our upper
range of usage for fields like that?
I mean, I think you pointed out no
matter how
much money we throw at it we can't
adjust
for that. What's the upper range for
those fields? Was
hillendale, I remember when it opened
and got a lot of
use. Is that typically
for a newly opened field? Is there
ways we can address the issue there
with maintenance of like increasing
use or synthetics at
the beginning of fields getting high
levels of traffic?
do we have some options along sort of
those lines?
>> I'm
going to let carl address
the question. We have looked at how
much play our fields are
getting versus what they can tolerate
and
those numbers are starting and sobering when
you see
them. So I'll let
them address that. We have
four artificial turf fields in our
system out of those fields
you saw. We're committed to grass fields
but they are
an important tool. They can take much
more play
and expand our capacity.
>> that's what I
was
curious in certain areas.
>> we're
driving deep and when I say how many
hours can
a field handle. Right now we have rough numbers.
we
think a practice game field can handle
aboutabout 600
hours of permitted play before it
starts to deteriorate
and a game only field because it's
controlled and no walk on
play we think about 800 hours. That's
based
on our experience with our current
fields. We
have latonia has two
game only fields rectangles natural
grass that are showing
wear. They are getting about 8
hundred hours. So those fields we've kind of
started to rest
one or two days a week to kind of
see if they can recover a little
bit.
>> yeah.
is that something that -- that was another
choice I was going
to ask, rotating fields like a
wednesday night off or what's the --
what are some options
for extending
the life of those fields?
>> we're
starting to do that
a little bit in our game only fields
but it
does reduce our capacity. It's a
give and take. You know, like I said in
the
fields we can contain or control,
we're testing it out, but we're not
looking to do that
in our practice fields. They're for
the community and, you know, that's
how we're going for it.
>> okay. >> thank you for the presentation.
as, you know, I love parks as I
appreciate the effort and time you put
in to
help maintenance the 12 athletic fields
our community
uses. Sports is a great bridge
in connection amongst our
residents and it's interesting that
parks fuels the economy because people
who play sports
buy merchandise, right, and so
it's great that we provide this opportunity
and synergy for commerce. I particularly
was
interested in your slide
17, 18 with regards to the fields.
I was going to bring that
up the wear and tear on the fields.
another field
I'm interested in, it's on lay
hill road at the intersection of route
200. I don't know the
name of the park but
it's also a soccer football field.
it used to be a soccer and football
field
but you have taken down the goal posts
there. Right on
the intersection
of 200 and lay hill road.
>> I think
that's lay hill
local park.
>> that park had a wear
and
tear issue also with the soccer fields
and
you guys closing it down for
long extended period of time and getting
it back up. I was going to bring
up the hillendale wear
and tear issue because I drive past
there going to visit the university
of maryland and it's always
packed on the weekends. It's packed.
for flag
football, soccer and other sports.
I was wondering if there
have been ideas with regards to shoe
usage like what kind of cleats they
could wear on the
turf, whether or not there's
overseeding on the turf and then
former councilmember
gabe albenas now the director of the
park recreation is
a big advocate for turf fields and
I appreciate all grass
fields because I think there is a
safety benefit for
using grass
fields as opposed to turf fields.
I was wondering
if there is a cost difference
between turf fields and grass fields
and/or
is it negligible or is it more
expensive to maintenance
turf than it is grass and if it's
less expensive to have one over
the other? How do you come about making
that
choice, whether or not to use turf or
grass? Because I note that to rent
a
turf field it's more expensive
than renting a grass field
and I was wondering how we --
how you balance that? I
played football at the university of maryland
and we used to
have the best grass ever in the
acc at the time was the best and the
person who
managed it retired and the people
who took over couldn't manage it and
the grass
died and put in
turf. If you can like dive into why
we
continue to maintain grass rather
than transition to
turf? I would be really interested
in that?
>> that's a lot of questions. I'm going
to try to answer --
>> I could just go on and
on because I love sports and grass.
>>
yeah. So we do seed all of our
natural grass fields and then you
asked a question about cleats
for natural grass fields and we don't
regulate
what cleats you can wear. We are a
natural grass system. We have 308
natural grass fields
and we have four synthetic turf fields.
you know, but synthetic turf fields
are a tool in the toolbox and in the
right locations they
sometimes make the right sense. I don't
have all the data on costs and all
that.
we can come back and have a conversation
about --
>> I
think in general? I think the rule
of thumb
is an artificial turf field maybe
more expensive to install but less
to maintenance. It's
really just a question of how much
capacity you're trying to provide.
they can give
you more playing time.
>> that's something to add. >> so
just
some follow-up, why in the high use fields that are
experiencing
through over use why have
we not decided to go
turf instead of
grass?
>> can I just say something about
that?
>> you may. >>
this topic has been
a topic of
discussion with parks for
years and it --I
was involved a lot
of studies and research has been done.
it's a very
controversial
topic because there are a lot
of literature out there in regards
to pros and cons
and it was very
controversial and, you know, parks
department had a plan for
replacing exactly what
you're saying, but because
of all these issues at that time it
was
eventually, you know, it was a lot
of ideas
and, you know, decision that
eventually it went to the
county council and, you
know, parks department committed to
work and increase the life for
turf and not --
for the natural grass and
not to continue going to regionally
that it was I
think in
1990s or so on how many turf they
had
a number of turf
that parks department planned to
do it so they shy
away from that plan. It was discussed.
it went to the public. It went to
the county council
and it was decided that that's how
we're we're going to proceed. I
believe the decision
at that time we're going to expand
that's why carl
is here we're going to expand and
have
many experts to come to
do parks department to help
to build better grass that
could be maintenanced
with longer lifetime. That is a
challenge and everybody else knows.
that's
where we are right now and I
know that -- you want to add something
else to it you could because we're
all involved in those.
>> yes. We've spent many millions
of dollars over, I would say,
the last ten years or
so, investing in
natural grass fields, in maintaining
them, establishing
a state-of-the-art practice for maintenance
of these
fields and I think what we've found
is there
is ultimately a limit. We are bumping
up
against it.
there is only so much you can do with
maintenance of a natural grass field.
at
some point you cannot have a
beautiful grass field that
gets unlimited play, and that's coming
something we're going to have
to confront and have more conversations
about.
>>
so we need to move on
here, but let in ask commissioner
linden, do you have any questions
or comments?
>>
no, no other questions. Really interesting
conversation
about the synthetic versus the natural.
sounds like it's been going on for
a long
time. Yeah, it seems like maybe
at some point it's worth kind
of re-exam blaring
baby steps with the capacity you're talking
about.
this was a great presentation and
I appreciate learning
how we maintain the grass and how
the whole system
works. Thank you so much.
>> great.
we look
forward to your presentation on the
[ inaudible ]
for fees. It's one of the things
I'm eager to do is, you know, I'm
sure you have
the numbers about like sort of how
much do
you spend a year on maintenance of
like
a grass field versus a
maybe a
synthetic field? I know that
in general whatever you
recommend the fees will never cover
the cost but it
will be good to show for us or the
council, however --regardless they
need to
be subsidized and it's a cost
that we want to provide
these fields for the reasons you mentioned
and there's a
cost. You can never charge the --
probably to --
the full cost of the maintenance,
but you need to charge something
and here's the
gap and this is
what we --part of our operating
cost we're asking a budget for to
pay for things like that.
I appreciate that. My daughters grew
up in
tacoma rec league soccer and
msi when they were four doing the
soccer probably picking your
grass as they start out they're grass
pickers and
then they really get into it. Thank
you so
much and we look forward to you coming
back and great
presentation. Thank you.
>> thank
you very much.
>> we're going to take
a --are we going to go in the
same hall or --we'll take a one minute
break and go
with our next item the north branch trail funding
approval. Thank you.
.
>>> good morning. We're on item 10
the northbranch trail fields
funding approval. We have randy,
andy and josh
visiting. Thank you.
>> good morning.
and thank you so much for making time
for us on
your agenda today on
issue. Andy
frank, park development division and
while I have
the honor of talking to
you today I have to say that the credit for
us being here
today really goes to our engineering
team, consulting team, our partners
at
state highway, our park leadership.
we are very happy
that we're able to come and ask this
request today because it represents
almost
15 years of work
to get to this point.
so I will proceed and proceed quickly
and open it up to questions. I'm going
to tell
you because none of
you were around except for
mitra when this started in its infancy, I
will
give you the history and jump into
where we
are today and why we're here
today with construction, construction
bid results and
the pdf for this project and what
we're asking for
is permission to transmit the
special appropriation request for
the fund. Let me talk about what northbranch
trail is,
not to be confused with
northwest branch trail, northwest
branch trail
is further right
near
frankp and this project will
connect mun caster road and emory
lane
trail which serves the citizens on
the north side of caster mill.
it's a great connection on the east
side and connecting on the
west side to an
existing walkway along
mun caster that will connect the community to
the rest and provide trail head parking.
this
project extends in a
recently built developer trail to
the icc trail, an
important connection. We're talking
about adding over two miles of
trail to our hard
surface system and this trail is being
designed to standards
and specifications because
of the transportation alternatives
program brand
that we had to use. Part of the cost
here is because this is in a stream
valley
park
and we are having to use concrete boardwalks
and
bridges to make this work. We're trying
to do
ada access and storm water treatment
as required by
the county. To get where we are in the
lower
left corner here is lake frank not
named after me, we're not there yet,
and what we're
doing, the red line, maybe a little
hard to see the squiggly
line is our extension of our
trail up to mun caster mill which
goes
about two-thirds of the way up the
screen from upper left
to lower right the connection we're
making and then at the
very top that left-to-right that is
the icc and you
can see a little bit of red that's
connecting to
the existing trail. So this is the
expansion
to our hard
surface trail program that we're looking.
what's the history? This trail is
recommended in a lot
of master plans and trail
plans and the plan was ultimately
approved in 2013 and
then had to be amended in 2017. Yes.
we are talking
about 13 years ago. I'm not going
to back away from
that. The amendment we had to do there
really involved addressing community
concerns and
it required us to relocate a trail
head and provide this connecter trail
that cross over northbranch, which
did have the added
benefit of connecting to that western part
of the muncaster trail.
this was a difficult project and this
represents what
it takes in this day and age for
local governments to do hard things
and this was challenging with some
of our partners but
also made possible by our different
partners
through dps, mde,
wssc, and sha. But this did require --
it required unusual things such as
a clomr and it was involved
with the sha office of highway
structures and their standards are
strict and updated their
requirements for this
in 2024. In 2025 sha required us to go
back
through ap evaluation and get a new
approval
from wssc. In virtually
all these cases it was new staff we
were working with that had
to take a look at it. Finally this
summer we
received sha authorization to bid
the project
which we did as quickly as we could
and
we bid in october 2025. What did
we get? We got competitive bids.
we advertised this project a lot and in
this we
got a bid of just about $6 million
in
our competitive bid process. So we
think we got
a real bid that represents
the market conditions as we speak
today. So
what does this do? Obviously, this
project was talked about years ago.
the world has changed in terms
of the cost of construction. We talked
a lot about the regulatory work we
had to do. Right now in our cip,
this pdf was given a total funding
of just about
$5. 3 million, of which $2 million was
tap brand. The rest is through pos.
the geobond and other sources. The
cost to date
to get where we have been is about
$1. 5 million
that represents staff time consultant
time,
some repair work that had to be done in the
interim which
allows us about 3. 8 remaining. What do we
think this is going to cost to build?
in addition to the contract costs
there's also an
sha coordination cost and construction
management and
we expect that the overall remaining
cost is
about $6.7 million.
that results in a shortfall of
$2. 9 million. This comes
in oh, boy $2. 9 million doesn't come out
of
thin air. We went back to our partners
at
sha and they were able to secure
an additional $2 million tap
brand funding, $2 million not having
to
come out of the county program.
that can cover everything. And so
what we're going
to --we would like to ask for is an
additional
900,000 in county
funds to match that tap grant
and cover the additional costs of the
construction
management, implementing the
project, and doing all those --doing
the additional work
to get this
implemented. Now, we know that construction
is challenging.
we may find different things when
in construction.
there may be contingencies.
the contingencies we're proposing
to come out of our level of
evident programs for our trail programs.
that would
be beyond anything that was required
beyond
that $900,000.
but we do
think it's important for us not to
totally shut down the rest of the
trail program that parks
works on and we do think it's
a valid request to
county to find
900,000 county funding.
we're working through the concurrence
and award program with sha.
coordinating with sha trying to save
money on some
of those remaining preconstruction
items how we're going to
set up the
construction management testing, making
agreements. What
we need to do now because this is --
time is of the essence.
we have bids. We do have
the bids. We require the contractor
to hold their pricing
for a certain amount of time but we
can only
do that for a certain amount of time
to
get this thing built. This is why we're
here today
and appreciating your accommodation.
we
need to ask for the planning board's
approval to submit a
special appropriation to the council
to cover this additional funding.
what would happen then the council
president
would refer that to the php
committee and they would consider
it and then to the full council for
special appropriation and a cip amendment.
the hope is
to get this all done this spring so we
can get notice to proceed on this
15-year project
that's been a long time coming and
our goal
is to open up this project next fall for
the community.
with that we would like to ask our
recommendation
is to --
for the planning board to
approve $2. 9 million to
the northbranch trail pdf including
$2
million of federal aid and
$900,000 in geobond and request we
can work with
the chair to quickly transmit the
request for special appropriation cip
amendment to the council
to facilitate allowing this project
to
get implemented under the pro kurmts
activity. Thank you so much.
I'd answer any questions you have.
>> thank you.
congratulations on getting
this state to provide a $2 million
grant. This is wonderful. This is
absolutely wonderful.
we always talked about
trying to implement --
it's been since
2013
we've been pushing this and
one of the things people are --it's needed and our been
also want to see progress. We go to these meetings and they
say you promised, not parks per
se, but in general, things we put,
we say we're going to do
when in our plans in planning or -- that --
but they never happen or don't happen
in a
timely manner. Thank you for getting
the grant. That was a lot
of money. Thank you. And we really --
I'm supportive of this. I I want you
to move as quickly as possible.
this would be money from the fiscal
year '26 county funds, correct?
>>
yes.
it's important we request the county to appropriate
this
money in the fy26 'budget to meet
the pro kurmts activity that's ongoing.
thank you.
>> questions or comments
from the other board members?
>>
just to say very supportive as well.
the $2 million
in federal aid is that different than
the additional grant
from sha? I just wanted to clarify.
>> the $4 million --the
sha slash federal government is
contributing $4 million now to this
project all
coming out of the tap program.
>> okay.
the tap specifically for two
and two. Just wanted to clarify.
>>
if I
may, so we had the $2 million grant
originally.
>> yeah.
>> then the bid came in so high
that honestly I don't know how we would
have been able to move forward with the
project as is. We were talking about
scaling the project back,
maybe doing it in phases, trying to
get
what we could with the money we had.
I really want to give credit
to staff who reached out to
state highway and state highway essentially
offered us
an additional $2 million. That's why
we're able to move forward with this
project as it's planned for and designed
now. Otherwise, I don't
know what we would be doing. So, you
know, a lot of credit
to staff and, of course, thanks to
state highway.
these grant funds we're so happy to
have them, they
come with strings attached as you can
see in this presentation.
>> of
course.
>> there's a lot of requirements
tied
to this funding. It's not easy to
get.
this additional request for
a supplemental in this cip is really
it's a very reasonable delta given
the bids that came in and the position
we thought we were in before.
>> money
with strings attached
is much better than no money when it's
covering over
two-thirds of the overage for that
than you
expected. I wanted to clarify and
something
that I think that's
great. That's great and I think --
I'm very supportive.
appreciate it.
>> so as you said, I'm
very familiar with this project. The
regional project manager on that mary
ann retired. I don't know how many
other staff
have retired
since this project has started
and $1. 5 million that is already
spent just
think about it, is probably
design and coordination costs.
so, although that I'm very appreciative
to
get the grants, but
this project is not
a normal design project that parks
department does. This project went
through
a lot of loops and
difficulties because of their requirements
and environmental requirements that
was put on this project
that it took so long. Of course we
had to do some
changes in the design
and other things, but
1. 5 million the
design
for $2. 2 million --2.
2 million mile project
is not normal.
this is a
great project and we need
to streamline
these permitting. We need to streamline
when, you know, we
love to get grants, but when it makes
it so
difficult that, you know, takes
15 years,
with $1.5 million and then you get
$2 million grant and then another
2, that we really appreciate to make
it
possible. But it makes it
difficult. So I just put it at
that and I appreciate and totally
fully support this project. I don't
know how
much contingency you were thinking.
maybe you
should add that contingency because
you need the level of
effort pdf for your trail, but I
leave it to your judgment. I trust
your
judgment that this is the right thing to
do,
but I wouldn't have minded --
I don't know how much money is available
for us to
get and how much you're talking about,
but I'm
fully open to that if you like to do
that. I
fully support. This is a very good
project.
it hasn't died after 15 years. We need to build it.
>>
commissioner bartley or linden? No
comments. Do I have a
motion --
>> I'm sorry. Go
ahead.
>> oh, no. Sorry. I
don't want to --
I wanted to thank staff
and director for your entire team
for your
persistence in moving this forward over
the
past 15 years. I agree with
what's been said
about --especially commissioner pedoeem
if this is how
things to go that's not designed in
a lot of ways
but as we know, infrastructure in
general
is increasingly hard, not just in
the county
but in the country and costs and complexity
of regulations and moving through
implementing partners and
on and on. I really appreciate and
respect
just, again, the perseverance to get
this done. Seems like
it's going to be a great project so thank
you.
>> great.
so do I have
a motion to --for approval to add
$2. 9 million to the northbranch trail
pdf including $2 million in the federal
aid and
900,000 geobonds and the
chair to transmit the request for
special appropriations to facilitate
timing council action to allow project
implementation.
>> move to approve adding
the
funds.
>> I second. >> all in favor.
>> yea. >> yea.
>> yea. >> the yeas have it. Thank
you. Thank
you for speedily presenting this
to us so we can move it forward.
time is of the essence because costs
keep going up. Thank you.
>> yeah.
we're going to take a one minute break
and start with our next item legislative update.
thank you.
>>> good morning. We're
on item number 9 legislative update
and we have deborah and jordan. Welcome.
>> thank you. We
have the first
of a series probably bills
that we'll be discussing with you during
this year's legislative session.
I'm deborah borden, with me jordan colbert.
thank you. You're going to put the
bills up
or the position statements up. First
of
all, I would love to thank
several other people, other than jordan,
that helped
us out last night. We were
working on these statements until
late in the evening.
bridget royer, emily
vias, kimberly man young, and
ilan into branda. We could not have
done
this without them and without
their help. It
was kind of critical yesterday,
so not enough time in the day but when
you have the help
you need it's really great
so thanks to them. So I
will stand with the land use comprehensive
general plans bill. We discussed this
a little
bit yesterday at the full commission
meeting, and,
yeah, this was a big one to review.
this is the one that was 52 pages.
the bill itself is
52 pages. As you can
see.
we put together some initial
comments about these changes
to basically the elements that would
go into comprehensive plans for the
state that would include
your general plan, your
master plans, sector plans. Basically
your comprehensive plans would have
to include these
revised elements. Some of
them are new elements and so we
had a lot of questions
from both planning departments about
these changes.
this --I don't believe this is
actually set for a hearing date
yet or at least it's not within the
next week or so, so we will continue
to look at this bill.
there's just so much in there. There's
no
way that we could get everything on
the first
pass. We're also going to reach
out to the department of planning
and see if we
can enter dialog with them. There's
a
lot to unpack here, and I don't want
to give
anybody the impression we are finished
with this with reviewing
this bill. This is
going to be a process. So I think I
can stop
there and see, do you want me to go
through and hit some of the points
in our initial comments or do you
have questions
that you would like to dive into yourself?
>> well, we would like you to go over
suggested recommendations.
we're going to see this again.
we're not making a decision on
this right now, but it would be good
to go over the key items
that you guys worked on last night that
you think are --we need
to really focus on.
>> okay. We can
do that. Okay.
so some of the more pressing
issues, I guess, I feel jump to are
the inclusion of things
like apf style study.
putting that into a plan.
that rang alarm bells with me from a
legal standpoint. You know, comprehensive
plans
are
aspirational, visioning. They are not, you
know,
legal code. They don't
have regulatory impact
except in very small
exceptional cases.
for the most part, master
plans are not intended
to be regulatory documents and so when
you start talking about adequate public
facilities ordinances and adequate
public facilities
studies, those are really a different
animal
and they really, I think, it
becomes problematic to try to include
that kind of thing in a comprehensive
plan
of any kind, even if it's a smaller
study
area. It's very difficult to do both
same time and do them
both well. You know, just because, you
know, even if you were able to put
something like that
into your comp plan, you know, your
comp plan is supposed to be
in place for ten
years or more. Things change, and, you
know, so how are you
going to change and adapt to that
if your apf is buried in
a master plan. We think it's
confusing and we would like to get
more
information about what they're trying to
do. One of
the other things that
stood out is on, I
guess on the second page that's on
the
screen. Let's see,
page 6, lines 23 of the bill, 23
to 30. It
talks about religious
institutions and that plans
should identify
the most appropriate patterns and
locations for religious institutions.
that is problematic as well because
religious institutions have special
protection under federal law,
specifically related to land use and
specifically related to governmental
burdens caused
by land use regulations. We are not
supposed to be in
the business of telling religious
institutions
where they can go and where we think they
can go. That's
just a little too
close to putting additional burdens
on them. What
if they don't agree and they want
to go some
place else? So, you know, we flagged
that for them. Let's see. What
else do we have?
>> why do you think
they put that in
there and then after that,
vice chair linden has his hand
up. Why?
>> I --I
don't
know. I have, you know, I can speculate
they
think in some counties churches,
religious institutions, you know,
take up a huge
amount of land and they think that
we
need to do a better job of, I don't
know, having some say about that,
but
it's a touchy thing to
suggest because we're not supposed to
be doing that. You
know, for the most part in most
zoning codes,
religious institutions are allowed
to go just about
anywhere, just about
anywhere a residential use is allowed,
religious institutions are allowed.
anywhere commercial uses are allowed
religious institutions are
allowed and that's on purpose. So
the suggestion was a little
alarming that we should
somehow start telling religious institutions
where we would prefer them to go and
then what
do we do with that
recommendation when the religious
institution comes in and wants to
go
some place else.
that puts us in a very difficult situation
and
possibly in a situation where we would be
violating
rlupa. That's something we would want
to talk to the state planners about.
it
may be that that was not their intention, but
we
don't know if they thought about
that.
>> thank you.
vice chair linden?
>> thanks, artie. Yeah. On
the religious piece, I
totally agree that feels like
a strange and complicated
and very --yeah, very
tricky, something that has --yeah,
I take your
point, that has a
lot of potential problems. But
I wanted to touch just quickly on
like you were describing as the
apfo piece of this
bill, and I'm trying to better understand
how you think the bill kind of describes
the need to provide that funding because --
and admittedly I read
through it for the first time yesterday and
I think I'm still trying to get my
head around a lot of pieces you were talking
about. My reading of it
was less --and please, obviously,
correct me, my reading it was less
describing an
apfo finding or
specific study and more trying to
express the
need to have
a discussion around infrastructure
and
facilities and services to
accommodate future growth and that kind
of
discussion is
not particularly unusual within comprehensive
plans in other
areas. Like just as an
example, in washington state, cities,
counties are required to
have what they call a capital facilities
element, they're
required to have a
utilities element, and the way they
do it
out there within the capital facilities element they
use
that discussion to inform a
facility's capital improvement program
that's part of
the comprehensive plan, obviously,
here in this
county, you know, for the reasons
that, you know, because
we're distinct the coin has its own
cip
and we don't really directly influence
that,
although we make recommendations, but I
think the benefit
in washington state
of including an infrastructure discussion is
that it directly
links growth concepts and growth plans
and future
land
use designations to a
formally adopted cip of some sort, and
not
saying that that would
be part of this here, but if it's
not required to make
a specific apfo finding, because
I agree that kind of finding is complex
and kind of --obviously, directly
related to
development, and requiresrequires
study,
I tend to think there could be a benefit
to having a discussion around infrastructure
in part because we have
those --we have those discussions
anyway with our
master plans
and kind of policy discussions and
we talk about the growth and
infrastructure policy every four years, but I
think it helps to make
our master plans more practical. It
helps to
daylight things potentially for county
council within our recommendations
to make sure
they understand the direct
relationships there and I think it's
a helpful
communications tool to the
public we do understand what's nest
in a
general way to accommodate the growth
we need and based on how I've seen
it done in
other places I think it can be done
without
an intensive study of the sort if
apfo would require. I guess that's
a long way
of saying I would be interested to
see
if you're reading it differently that it
is specifically talking about adequate
public facilities
or if, you know, the --
potentially more generalized
requirement that we can then
implement as, you know, in other words
if there's some flexibility we could
make it
fit our updates?
>> so I will
give you a general answer and then I
feel defer to jason sartori,
director of planning and his staff.
so generally
speaking, of course we talk about infrastructure in
our master plans in our
general plans. Infrastructure, public
utilities, public
facilities, are all very crucial to
planning, you know, in any sense.
so that is not the
issue. The issue is what --why are
they changing the language? What are
they trying to get at?
you know, what's new about
this? And in reading
through it seems like they're getting
way too
close to an adequate
public facility's type finding and
so
because we're not sure we need to
reach out to them,
we need to say to them this is
worrisome because this is not the
place to do that type of study, but
if
you mean something else then let's talk
about how we
can clarify that. Let's talk about
what your intent actually is so that we
can get to
that. Because all of us, prince
george's, montgomery, we're all looking at
our public
facilities, the adequacy of them,
every single time that we do
a master plan, but we're looking at
them in a
general, holistic, what are the trends
kind of
ways. We're
not doing be a study. We seem
to, in this language, be getting sort
of conflating those things and we
want
to make sure that that is not the
case and that as we
go forward we
all know what we're talking about
when we
say we want you to analyze
the public facilities, public institutions, all
of these things that are, of course, you
know, already sort of
embedded in the idea of master planning.
but
we want to know what
they mean by this
new language so that we can make sure
we're clear. I don't
know if jason is online or in
the room. But please add to that.
>> I am here. Thank you. Vice chair
linden, thank you for asking that
question. I have
not personally taken too close of
a look at
this bill yet. But I will --I will
take a closer look at
it. I agree that it's --it would
be fine for
a bill to have general statements about
the importance of infrastructure in
a comprehensive
plan, but anything that
gets too specific we have so many
other methods and
tools by which
we do that it wouldn't be appropriate
to have those in
a comprehensive plan. I also want
to make
sure that what we're looking at is
applicable
to counties because there are parts
of this bill specifically intended
for municipalities and
not counties and so I will take
a look at closer at this. I don't
know if
robert might have additional comments on
this.
>> yeah. Thank.
I'm sorry.
>> go ahead. >>
just real quick,
thanks. I appreciate that. I was
about to raise that same issue about
whether this applies
to municipalities or counties. We
have a little bit more
to read through. Looking through the
language it
appears to me on first glance this
particular
section talk about municipalities
and their future growth
areas outside of the limits.
and later on it talks about
public service and infrastructure
to accommodate growth within the growth
areas. I appreciate everything that
y'all
are saying. I very much
agree clarity around bills like this
is hugely important. I
was mostly raising the question to
better understand
if we think it does --like
making sure that, you know, we ourselves
fully understand it, clarifying with them
if they fully
understand it, if it veers too closely
for counties,
that's a little more problematic.
but this sounds like we're sort of --
I appreciate everything you're saying.
we're on the same page.
>> I'm
not sure there's much more to add
to that other
than getting clarification and
providing a little bit more information
on what's in the
bill. For our comp plans, they are
intended to be
long-range visions and so that's why
you do an
apf test at the
development stage with a real project
that comes in. Again, the
comp plans are intended to
be visionary and not
address specific apf testing at
that time. We look at infrastructure
through master plans
but not to the level of a
development application. I think that's
why
that language in the bill kind
of --
>> thank you both for that.
I think you can
move onto
the --
>> I want to highlight just a couple
of other things.
there is a
sort of
a theme running through this bill
that
they want us to look at more things
and do more deep
analysis, so things like
the elimination of substandard
dwelling conditions, a full
housing
assessment, which is not
really defined, you know, more economic
analysis, again, which
is not really defined.
you know, this could mean that we
would have
to hire more experts in these areas.
it could
mean we would have to take
more time to complete these plans
if we're going to do real
deep dives
into, you know, housing conditions
and economic analysis.
again, we want to have a
constructive conversation about what this
means
on a
practical level because there can
be, you know, a sense that you --
you're
pursuing the perfection.
you're pursuing, you know, the perfect and you
could end up analyzing forever and never
getting your
plan done. I mean, you know, there
are
lots of things we wish we could do
with master plans, but they are,
you know, they are --they have to
be finite at some point,
and so these things are concerning
because it --
they just keep adding and
adding to areas where we would have
to, you
know, sort of beef up
resources and add time and add more
time to
a process that's already pretty
lengthy in some, you
know, some circles. That's a concern
that we have.
>> great. >> great
to --
>> anything else. >> that would
be great to get
more clarification and ask why.
I think director sartori had his
hand raised.
>> thank you. I had a
question about
this. I know a lot of this --
well, portions of this are a repackaging
of what
already exists. Some of these things
were already required
and renaming them, they were reordering
them.
they are adding a few
new things. I'm curious, though, the
way
we do master plans to our
general plan thriving versus all of
the master plans and sector plans
that we
work through that are
amendments to thrive. So, you
know, a housing element has been required
and our housing
chapter in thrive was found to be
sufficient as the
housing element required by state
law
previously. Do we need to have all
of these
different types of elements in all
this detail
in every single master plan
or is it sufficient for us to have elements
in
thrive alone? How does this exactly
apply to
that distinction?
>> yeah. That's
a good question, and that's
not entirely clear from the bill, you
know, because
legally, the definition of comp
plan or comprehensive plan, would
apply to all of our
master plans, all of our sector plans,
you
know, doesn't matter how large
the geography is. You know,
so that's a good question. And
that's one that we would like to discuss with
the
department of planning.
you know, because
again, you could read --you know, you
could
read this to apply to just
about any planning process that
we enter into and that could be
incredibly impactful, you know. I
can't
answer your question, but I
think that's a good
question.
>> commissioner linden has his
hand up.
>> director sartori's
question, I'm glad, thank you for
asking that, that
was one of the things I was going
to raise as well. Sounds
like some charity there is good.
I just had one final comment
about --I know
we're not making decisions on this
today, so this is more
comment for our own consideration
as we
move toward, you know, deciding how
we want
to transmit or, you know, whether
we want to transmit support or
just comments or whatever the case
is. So
it looks like they're introducing
a new resilience element, which I
saw, you know, some
discussion around that in ms.
jordan's team document, which appears
to sort of get at --
it appears to cover a variety of different
things, environmental,
climate, probably some other things.
I
was wondering if there would be any
appetite on our end
to considering a recommendation to
the bill authors to
consider reframing this element as
some version of climate change and
resilience to, you know,
just to elevate climate
to a more kind of serious
point of consideration in all of our
master planning and
general plan efforts. Not that
we internally don't here. I know we
do it here. In
terms of state wide. I think that could
be --
it's coming back to kind of, you know,
emerging practices or how other communities
are sort of
treating climate change from a planning
perspective these
days. Increasingly many do
try to have chapters
or elements within these comp
plan updates for master plan
or sector plan updates. It provides
a
way to talk about several different
things
including what jurisdictions
can do to reduce
greenhouse gas to
the com plan and cover resilience
too.
I guess that's an open question for
us if that's something that we could
discuss more
as we move toward a decision on this
and if it's
worth providing that recommendation
back to the
state. Obviously, recognize that, you
know, when you
start introducing kind of things and climate
change at a legislative
level
it gets political quick and I get
that and taking a
bite at the apple without raise too
long many
flags. I do think it's
worth elevating. I understand it's
something
worth taking on if we're supportive
of making that
recommendation. Wants I wanted to
flag something
on my mind with our work, obviously,
but
this seems like a good opportunity
to
codify it in state law.
>> would defer to director
sartori's staff to come up with some
maybe
proposed language and then we
could react to that. And
maybe they could, you know,
include a little sort
of blurb to talk about why they think
it's a better framing of
the issue. I would defer to that.
>> thanks for bringing
that up, vice
chair. I would like to, give all this
that just
came through, I would
like to review it all and we're all looking
at it together and the next time
we get together we can discuss it.
but thank you
for bringing that up.
>> okay. I
feel move onto the next. And thank you
for those
comments. I really
appreciate them. So the next one is
the starter and silver homes act.
we mentioned this yesterday
at your meeting. The --this
is the bill
from the governor's administration
dhcd had
proposed this bill.
this bill would
make some fairly
significant inroads by the
state into local zoning
authority.
the
bill would --
that we not enforce
lot size, setback, dimension
requirements, design,
architectural elements, for
certain single-family homes.
and the
bill would prohibit local --the
local
jurisdictions from certain
subdivisions. It would
allow as long as a lot
has sufficient lot
size, it would allow, you
know, basically buy right subdivision, you
know,
up to a
certain size. This
bill
really makes a lot of changes in
a statewide way to local zoning rules
and
regulations that differ
county by county. And sometimes
city or town by city.
so we're very concerned about the sort
of one-size-fits-all approach
to this. We're
concerned about the impact
on existing neighborhoods because you
can
visualize this, existing neighborhood
that
maybe has a lot or
two that hasn't been built yet.
that lot could then come in and
say, well, I don't have to do
setbacks, I don't have to do
minimum lot requirements anymore, I
can split this lot into two
and build two homes
where normally, you know, and in looking at
the
neighborhood I would only build one.
and the other thing that
really concerns us
is, there are other
efforts to increase affordable housing
or increase the supply of
housing. And one of those efforts
was
recent. It was the adu bill,
the requirement that, you know, we
all figure out
a way to
do and to allow accessory
dwelling units. Well, you know, we're
not
really sure that this is going to
work well or work in concert with
that. This new bill, it seems to
us,
may contradict or work, you know, to
have
the opposite effect of the adus. Because
if you can just split your lot and
create
another home or sell another lot
for another home to be
built, wouldn't
that just, you know, be a
disincentive to do an adu?
we're not sure if that would apply because there are so
many
different issues that we would have
to
test to see if that's the case,
but we're concerned that might be the
case
because we would have to put through
the parameters that are in this bill
and
actually test them and
see if, you know, if it makes, you
know, the adus
less palatable to
people who could just divide their
lots instead where maybe they
couldn't divide their
lots today. So we want to look at
that.
we want to do some examples so that we
can
show that, you
know, these concerns are real.
we have some
technical comments we've put together.
we
do have a meeting scheduled with the
department
of housing and community development at
the state level. We want to talk to them about
this bill.
you know, because, you know,
we're concerned. We're
concerned about the state treating all
of our
counties the same and expecting a
good
result. We don't think this is
going to have a good
result because the results will be
uneven and sometimes they will
be counter to what the
state is trying to do, and that's
not
helpful. You know, it doesn't help
when, you know,
the state thinks, you know, this is
what we're
going to do, this is how we're going
to do it and it
doesn't work at the local level. That
doesn't
help any of us. We're trying to be
helpful. We
want to be helpful. We want --we all
have
the same goal. We want affordable
housing. We
want more supply of affordable housing.
that is what we
want. There's no question about that.
it's about how we get there and not
going forward too fast and making
mistakes that will then make
the provision of affordable housing
harder. We don't
want that. We're going to work with
them.
these are our initial comments, as I
said.
we will bring this back
to you again probably at least twice,
so that we
can refine what we're saying and
hopefully we'll get
some clarity when we meet with dacd.
we'll get some clarity
on some of these points. Hopefully
they'll
be open to some suggestions about
what we
can do to make all of this work.
>> yes.
>> I'll stop there and see if you have
any questions.
>> can I say
one thing? It's a fine
line and I know one size doesn't
fit all and just
certain areas having, you know, really, really
small lots may not work. The goal is how do
you
--can we
make? To give the nudge,
right, how do you --what are --what
are comments that
give a nudge to all
the municipalities around that you
need to do things differently?
so I know what's here won't make
it --but --because we all
municipalities even in our county, you know,
there's the down
county, the mid county, up county
with all
different right of way
of lot sizes. Let's think through.
let's put
our thinking hats on.
what could we say that
could give the nudge? You need some
nudges because we've tried really
hard over
the past couple years with all
of these obtainable housing, more
housing now and
these other
things, to try to
do it in a way where we
have people on our local level, you
know, in our
own context, and everyone agrees
we need more housing, all
types, everywhere. But we're
not getting there.
what's --what gets approved
is nominal for the --
>> for the larger --
>>
so let's --that would
be my suggestion. Let's put our heads
together. How
can we change all this and
give recommendations to at least provide
a nudge. We do want
to bring our local partners in the
game. Don't want
to get too ahead of them, but at
the same time we haven't --
>> just
trying
to understand
this bill a little bit more.
when you say certain areas, could
you
just give a little bit more
example? Where
are those certain areas?
>> okay.
I will go to the bill
and I will look at --
let's see. Some of the
language. Luckily this bill
is not 52 pages.
>> and just so you
know, lisalisa here as well.
>> wonderful.
>> to help you out with some of the
details.
>> thank you.
actually, why don't I defer
to lisa on that question?
>>
sure. Lisa, planning
supervisor with design --so the
area that we're generally talk
about in this bill are areas that
are connected or planned to
be connected to public water
and suer systems. So one of the things
we're come back
with, we have a graph of the zones
and how much of them are covered
by water and sewer, but if
we're generally talking about our
residential
detach, so think
60, our 90,
40, 200, some of the residential state
zones like ra
2, ra 1, but not the
entirety of the zones because they're
not all
served by water and seer
with which ms. Jordan said the problem
one size
fits all but our zones are not one
size fits
all.
>> it's the majority of the county?
>>
the majority of the residential zones.
>> residential zone.
and the way that it is
written, it's going to change it
with no public input and no council
oversight, so the thing is
that supposedly this bill goes
through people really don't follow
it
and suddenly everything in the county
would
change with no public
input or the county council oversight.
is that correct?
>> I think the public input on the
state legislative session.
>> yeah.
>>
but generally there would be a lot
of changes that would have to be
made to minimum lot sizes, coverage
and setback.
there would be a lot of changes to those
through this legislation.
>> yeah.
I know
that's some of my --I can hear --
but I do
support, you know, what, you know, ms.
borden talked about. That's something
that we
don't really know how it's going to
be
done and how it would
work. You know, usually if you have
public access available and everything, you
know, public
transportation or something, but this
is not even looking at
that. It's just looking at public
water and
sewer.
>> that was one of the comments
that the
overarching comments we made this kind
of
goes against a lot of growth. A lot
of
our zones areare 200, for
example, not exactly the most transit
accessible zone for
a lot of it and that goes against
some of our
basic --
>> yes. And
also the quality of life for
the existing communities completely.
that's why when
you take the public input out that's the
impact you could see.
>> I would just
like to comment that I've read through
the language and
it's incredibly complex and I appreciate
the technical comments about sewer
and water
access but there's nothing in this
billbill would do what we
say we want to do is increase housing
supply.
we've seen and know from existing
jurisdictions who have
lowered the lot size to 1800
square feet, I'm thinking of austin
specifically we've seen a growth
and growth in housing supply
and we've seen empirically what happens
when we do what we've been doing
which is a crash in multi family
starts. So we --the argument that
we're not
sure what's going to happen, I think
empirically doesn't hold
a ton of weight for
me and I think from a goal standpoint
we've been trying
and we've been going backwards. So
what we say we
have a goal of affordable
housing, increased housing supply
and as a county we've
gotten worse over the last year. Housing
starts have been down badly. And I
think there's
nothing in this bill that's not empirically
supported by
evidence from outside of our
jurisdiction that it will increase
housing supply and not cause major issues.
the
things about the technical comments
from, you know, things like access
to sewer and water, one of the reasons
that you don't have access
to sewer and water out there is because
it's intended to like stop housing
supply out there.
that's one of the reasons that we
have in one of the
richest counties in the world septic
and well which
I like don't quite understand coming
from rural texas. You had
septic and well because you couldn't
get sewer and
public water where I was from.
and we've talked about it in the
planning commission before about the
safety,
collapse of those and pollution that
happens with these septic systems.
I appreciate technical corrections
there. I
understand and would support some
comment like
that, but I think we should expand
public sewer and water for a
variety of reasons not the least of
which being housing
supply. We have goals that we have
stated. If this is
a turf battle let's just say it's
a turf battle. If this
is a policy goal, then let's
treat it as policy goals. I said very
similar
things at the overall meeting yesterday.
I'm fine with
technical comments. I'm fine with
discussing issues here. But the actual
policies implemented here are things we
have talked about and discussed with
attainable housing and other situations.
if it's a turf battle it's
a turf battle. If it's a policy
issue treat is as a policy issue.
nothing jumps out from
my reading here that this is in any
way, shape, or
form a danger to anything that --
or any of our stated goals. And we
have the
evidence for that. We have other jurisdictions
who have
experienced all the things mentioned in
this policy. We can
go with actual data. And we can go with goals
and policies
that we've set forth and thrive in
our situations.
so I think overall we should treat
this as a policy
issue not as a one size fits all because
this
isn't one size fits all. This is taking
away the
level of unnecessary complexity we have
layered on
over decades and decades which we
know inhibits the growth of housing supply.
treat it one way
or the other but let's be particular about
what we're doing. Those are my comments on it.
>> linden?
>> yeah.
I don't have much to add to
that.
I agree with
commissioner hedrick's comments almost
entirely. I do take the point about sort
of, you
know, how does this square with kind
of
smart growth principles. It would
be lisa, it would be great
to see kind of a map of
what you're describing and just understanding
throughout the county kind of which --
where this would apply and
proximity to various things, but I
also, you know, based on everything
we were
saying and what commissioner hedrick
was getting
at, the
water/sewer infrastructure right now --
apologies,
that's my 6-month-old --but the
water/sewer infrastructure kind
of functionally serves as
a boundary to
try to constrain
housing stock or at least density
generally but place it in closer proximity
to other infrastructure. We can debate
the merits of that, of course,
but that exists and the
bill seems to acknowledge that. Also kind
of layers on
that, that constraint in terms of
where this
would apply. But outside of
that, I tend to think that minimum
lot sizes
and really driving those down, the
size
of those, I think that that
is a great strategy
and I agree with commissioner hedrick
evidence across the country shows
it actually does move the needle.
there are some
mixed results when it comes to like
middle housing in terms of performance,
the devil
is in the details of housing in a lot
of ways.
some communities have moved forward
with great success.
others are kind of stagnant. But
dropping the minimum lot size
is a way to, in some
cases, functionally achieve middle
housing
densities even if we can't get middle
housing
types like multiplexes.
this would legalize townhomes which I
think is a
great addition as well. But the minimum
lot size, you
know, particularly in a county
like ours, where
there's so much variability, even
within our 60 or
90 --we had this conversation on attainable
housing, huge distribution of lot
sizes,
and right now I'm just thinking specifically
in my
neighborhood just as
one example, I know personally of
two 20,000 foot r-60 lots that can right
now hold one house. Or they could
try to split
it to get
down to, you know, a
few, you know, 6,000 minimum. But
this really, you know,
this increases it beyond that, right.
like, this really tries to
maximize
the land we have close to infrastructure,
closer to the infrastructure we already
have, and, you know, it doesn't
really try to get into other --introducing
other housing types which, you know,
there's, obviously, benefits for that
as well in terms of
attainability in
different needs. In terms of supply, to
provide more supply,
where we're not seeing multi families,
we just
need to keep doing things, and
I'm not particularly concerned that
the state
doing something
potentially and not us. We kind of
live in a regional community and everything relates
to
each other and I think having a flat
floor or a
set standard across the entire state
is actually a good
thing in many
ways. I think it would benefit
us, too. So I --which is all to say
that,
yeah, the technical
clarifications and comments and suggestions
based on our particular circumstances I
think
that sounds great. But I also agree
that I think this
is one example of maybe kind of
keeping our eye on
the policy ball and given what we
know about
how difficult things can be, here in
the county, with
our master plan,
with
policy, attainable
housing, it seems like there's --
sorry about that --seems like
the state wants to work with us and
help us.
>>
yeah. Great.
>> and I think this is
one case we should welcome that help.
>> can
>> the
minimum lot size included here is
5,000 square feet.
not that much smaller than our existing
r60 and a minimum sized
r90. We have oversized
lots, but this is not making
radical changes to our residential
zones.
>>
well, yes and no. So, we
have more land
area in our 200 within
the qualifying area than r60 and r90.
>> that is because of large lots.
>> yes.
the minimum lot sizes are
220,000.
this is a combination of
issues. There is a turf battle, and
there
is a policy issue. It is both. The
state, in
doing this, is applying
very specific zoning requirements
and
standards, kind of in a blanket way
across the
entire state. It is a one size fits
all
without regard to differences between
counties. But
then there is also within our county,
it
is applying a one size fits all. It
does
not recognize that, you know, we
take a scalpel to
our zoning.
we look property by property. This
would
apply to 14 different zones in montgomery
county that have 14 distinct purposes
and reasons. Instead of a scalpel
it
is a
machete.
>> some of them are
townhome density ones.
>> we can come
back with maps that
show you where it would apply, but
the concern is
that we have decades in the state
with
policy and within montgomery county.
I mean we just did a general plan
update where we
were explicit about smart
growth, sustainable growth patterns.
we have
lots and zones
that it would apply to that are zoned
as large lot residential uses for
that purpose. So the concern here is not
every
area that has water and sewer service
in montgomery
county is an area that we have said
is
a priority for growth.
generally the idea of smaller lot
sizes is
great. We talked about stuff like
that a lot.
but really in the areas that we see
the
infrastructure and we see our near
existing
centers. Infrastructure is more than
water and
sewer. If they came in and said
this applies only to areas within
a certain distance
of transit or other existing
infrastructure, then I would say that
it is more of a
turf battle than a policy
battle.
>> we are going
to hear this. But it would be
great if youryour can come back.
if it said x,
you know, what would you have to say
to
bring it back to the board for you
to
say yes,
this is something that would be good to
do?
you know,
I do agree.
the county does want it in
certain areas.
where would we want to have
the smaller lots that are 55,000 square
feet or less?
but we need to keep
going here.
miss borden.
>> yes, we
do. Thank you for that discussion.
I really
appreciate how tricky that
these issues are with this matter,
you know.
this affordable
housing push has been a multiyear
effort.
we are going to get both of
the
planning
departments together to
talk about alternatives. You
know, we do not want
this to
be viewed as a turf battle. We
want to help.
it
is a tricky difficult puzzle and don't
think
the one size fits all approach will
work. We are ready to do that. We
will do
our best to do.
but I wanted to make the
point that we tried the scalpel and
the opposite of one
size fits all with 14 different residential
zones. What have we gotten for our
efforts? A housing crisis. We are
totally fine with a one size fits
all approach when
it is a limit on development and
supply.
one other comment.
can we be nice
if the state would have policies that
would incentivize. They
need policies that would move
the needle enough where people would
say yes in this
case. Right now. Let's do it.
how? Is there money out there?
is there whatever? How do you
incentivize this. You know, this
is human nature. Please. I know
that you have more to go. We
only allocated --
>> I
just want to say that I
do support what the director said.
I think
that is how the approach should be
to make it
happen and to prioritize the
areas where we could do this. Not
as a whole.
>> hb10.
legal advertisement or notice. This
bill is a long
time coming. We really hope the bill
passes.
this would basically change the definition
of legal notice.
it
would allow the use of
digital media.
you
have to go to a digital media publication
that publishes online and pay them
to publish your
notice.
you can use it
instead of a print publication.
we think this will save us
money. You know, we think that it
is a
really good idea. We do a lot of
notice publications in our planning
departments.
particularly for master
plans. Community planning does a
lot of
legal notice and occasional
notice at the
corporate
level. So,
we are very much in support of this.
we didn't have to
think about it too much. But we prepared
some comments.
if you have questions I would be happy
to answer them.
is the legal
notice going to be
limited?
with
community interest or alsoalso affect
proceedings?
>>
any statutory requirement for
legal notice.
I don't know if I
can abstain from this. I am against
electronic --
>> except provided by
law
a resolution or
court order.
this is
for other cases, by newspaper
or newspaper in general circulation.
that is the
current term. Now they just added
that
it can mean print or digital publication.
there is congratulational criteria
to make sure
it is a legitimate outlet, but it
does not
affect the court stuff.
>> thank you
emily.
>>
yeah.
giving notice of a
this property is going to be rezoned.
>> not for
mailing. It does not affect mailing
notices, only
when it specifically says by newspaper.
you know, generally that is the
master plan.
the super.
it
just says allow. Now go to a
legitimate digital source as well.
>> okay.
the
digital newspaper.
how do the people know to
go to the digital newspaper?
>> people
are doing it now. I think partly what
we
are thinking is that we will reach
more people. The number
of people that get a newspaper now
is
dwindling significantly. So many people
get
it electronically.
I don't know about the costs.
the newspapers know know this.
sometimes it is less. Sometimes
it is not.
the planning department realizes that
is how they reach a lot of
people, through electronic
opposed to paper.
you can do the digital version
of the
newspapers.
I have a question about cost.
miss borden said that it would be
less
expensive.
how?
>> I think that it just depends on
the outlet. Maybe we just don't know.
I think that it depends.
>> I don't
know. And without endorsing any outlet,
I
will say that an example, you know,
right now
when we have aa
hearing we advertise in the washington
times. We don't
have a print publication in montgomery
county, however
we have the new
banner. Bethesda magazine.
we have other local digital media
outlets
that we could be
using that would probably connect
more
to montgomery
county residents and it may
be cheaper but we have not done it.
>> I
am curious. I always wanted to ask
this. Why
the times? Why not
the post?
>> I think it is cheaper than
the post.
>> that was all.
>> I am against
the
.
>> I can't support it with
me knows how
electronic
publications can manipulate
the information. If there is
an error made but
not in print.
I
think that print media is better
to capture the areas without
edits that would deprive the
public for fair opportunity.
I can't support digital
publication.
it has happened with banks who have
given digital
statements, make an error and go back
and correct
the statements opposed to republishing or reprinting
the error.
>> I can't support it. >> isn't it
true that
electronic media does
not --
>> they can do a publication
that
is incorrect that would
require them to
lish and set the deadline and
the timeline. Instead of
republishing in lifetime they
only reset the date. When you have
a
publication that is incorrect and
requires a
notice. It requires a new
publication and the deadline and the
timeline. My concern if you make an
error electronically, and say the
clock starts
ticking now rather than them
republishing and then having the new timeline.
you
can go back and correct the error
and not
reset the clock and allege there was
no
error at all.
when
you electronically publish something and
there is an
error,
there is the possibility where they
correct something electronically and say
no. It was
always that way.
in print, there is no
edit.
can you add
something
or how would you address that?
>>
I would not
address it in
the physical statement.
if we were
to use digital publication that we
would have
to have
a printed representation
of what was the
digital legal
notice
that we can compare that the
notice has been changed. It would
be
a part of our process that we have
to print
the original
notice when it
goes out and print from the website
or
the publication so that we have it
on day one
so that we can then
use that as
our verification that is what it said
on day one. If
it gets changed, we have a bone
to pick with the publisher. We can
extend
the time that we need, you know, in
terms
of the notice period. We have a lot
of
experience doing that and working
with that. You know,
our signs. Signs
get blown down.
if the sign is
blown down a
notice period would be extended so
everybody can
go to the hearing or be notified of
the
hearing. It is not
that much different.
>> I am supportive
if this goes
through that is in the process.
you know.
>> we would make it so.
>> okay.
>> do we
need a vote for that one?
>> yeah.
thank you. Do we have
a vote on that one so
that we are
sure we
can make the representation.
>>
I move for approval.
>> all in favor.
>>
aye.
>> aye.
>> okay. The
next one is sb121, public
servant protections.
this is part two, really. Part one
was
the
wilkinson act.
I think that went through last year
or
the year before.
if you were
a judge in this case you
could request your personal information
to be removed
from websites run by
government entities.
he is used to
dealing with these requests. It has
been running smoothly.
we have not had problems or hiccups
with
it. This is now expanding
the wilkinson act, basically, to
other people who
are
in
need of extra protection. What the
new
bill will do is add, in addition
to
judges, attorneys. Members of the
general assembly. Various, you know,
different
actors. Let me go through and get
the list.
it
would allow
them to request their personal information
to
be
removed. Protected
individuals include attorneys, state
prosecutor, state's
attorney, u.s. Attorney. Current
or retired law enforcement.
retired member of the police force
or other member
of the united states. Federal,
state or local elected officials.
spouses and
depend ants of those folks. You
know, if their information and address
would appear in our
system they can request for that information
to
be removed. Now, when it gets to be
that the information is a part of
our record in a case
it gets a little
bit complicated.
but you know, as the list
expands, and we expect that it will
continue to expand.
we might
have to add resources to deal with
the requests.
I will stop there and see if you have
any questions.
>> I think that this is a
good idea.
I
think they need to have
anonimity because of the views others
share,
however I think there needs to be
an
ability to obtain the addresses in
the event that these people or individuals
are subject
to legal actions that require them
to
be served.
if there is a request for
their addresses for the purposes
of constituting a legal
matter against
them
I think that needs to be available
for those
reasons only and there needs to be
a way
it is managed. An example would be
an off duty police officer driving
his private vehicle is involved
in an automobile accident and subject
now to a personal injury claim.
they are not
expect from being
pursued in a civil
litigation act. Being
served and it shouldn't be allowed.
there
has to be some kind of
a
provision
provision.
>> thank you for that.
how would
we address that?
>> I think that idea
is being addressed. The bill is establishing
a program under
the secretary of
state that would be the
clearing house for the confidentiality
requests. You know, just like the
secretary of state is where you would
go if
you can't find a resident agent to
serve. You
would go to the secretary of state
if you
could not find an address because someone
requested the confidentiality.
>> you are saying that
there is a way to get the information?
>> yes. The bill
is establishing the program under
the secretary of state. Yeah.
you would go there. You would go there
in order to get the information.
I don't know. This is not the
type of thing that we get involved
in. You
know, usually we are dealing with the people
that come
and testify and give their address.
you know,
we are not generally the place
to go if you are looking for someone.
>> okay.
any other comments or
questions?
is there
a motion?
>> one more. I'm sorry.
>> yeah. We do have one more. We
don't have a position statement for
it. Just
very quickly, this is a
bill that would
require --those were informational
comments. We don't need a vote on
that unless you
do want us to take a position
on the protected
individuals.
so,
the last one, I promise,
public schools, water safety and swimming
course.
this bill would require the state
board of
education to develop a crim lumb
around water safety and swimming.
this is the
second time that the
bill has come before the general assembly.
we would
like to support the bill. We think
that it
can be workable in the sense that
it requires a crim lumb but it
does not require each school to have
a pool. Water
safety is important. Obviously we
have facilities.
some of our facilities have pools
and some of
the facilities are
in close proximity to public schools.
we are
happy to work with schools to help them
with this curriculum as
well as help
them
do or plan for implementation. I
will stop there.
there is
a class, and how do we participate
in the class?
there
are models for this
throughout the country.
we
want to talk about water
safety courses.
we are a
resource, and we
want to
we are raising our hand to
help and
do
.
>> last year
I did verbal testimony with her on
the bill and she has
been working with the parks and
recreation department to ensure
that we
provide sound
feedback and recommendation for the
bill. Last year,
I think we
just offered
verbal testimony in
support of the bill.
>> have
you talked to the public schools?
>> yeah.
are they supported?
does it come with financing?
this is probably where
they have to bus the kids
during the school hour to go to the
pool and come back. It is not free.
>> you
know, it is explained to us that
the curriculum can include pool time
but it does not
have to. It can literally
just be classroom instruction
about water safety.
>>
but it says swimming.
yes.
swimming course.
it is a great thing if they do,
but I am saying if the public school
gets
funding for that.
even though it
says swimming
course
doesn't mean they have to go to the
pool.
>> it
is more of a
safety course.
it is about
basically safety on
the water.
they want
to be able to assist the
sponsor, you
know,
talk about how it can
be
implemented without a pool or water-
based approaches.
we can get more information and have
a more
detailed presentation next week if
you want, but we did not
plan to do a position statement on
this.
we wanted to just interact with the
sponsor and have
you aware that we are going to interact
with a sponsor.
no need for a vote.
>> it is great
that you brought it before us. We
are learning
more about it.
yeah.
>> I
wanted to mention something. I think that we
do want to
do a statement on it. I think
that we have time to bring it back
next week.
we want to get a statement, and we
want to get support on thethe bill.
>> we will
have more information when we bring
back a
draft position statement.
>> often
given
that it affects both counties
is there someone that could
check our department
of recreation.
we can check with gabe
or someone there.
>> she is as it does not include swimming.
it does make sense to include swimming,
but it is not playing with the water.
>> I think that it does say there
are options.
they will be
participating in this in either event.
we will find
out --
>> one
last thing.
can you check with the rec department
and make sure
they have seen this? I don't know
if they
weighed in last year? I am fine with
it.
I wanted to touch the
bases.
>> that's it.
all we have.
>> one more comment.
>> yeah. Is this bill
going to be
mandatory with regards
to the department
of education?
>>
it would be a mandatory requirement
they
develop a curriculum. How
they implement would depend on the
local boards and schools, but again
that is something
that we want to help the
sponsor with.
>> I am
against the bill.
I don't think
that it had
it all. It is a distraction from focusing
on the blueprint.
>> okay. >>
you will comecome
next --what?
>> we will get back to you next week
with a
bit more information and proposed
language.
>> great.
thank you.
thank
you. This is the start of
many, many
discussions
we are go to
take a two-minute break and
then start with the next
item, number 5. Briefing
community trends
report, a look at montgomery county communities since 2010.
thank you.
>> we are
on item number 5. A look at montgomery
county
community since 2010. Staff is providing a
briefing to
the board. We have james lee of the
planning department this
morning leading the presentation
with his distinguished cast of teammates
there.
thank you.
>> chair harris, members
of
the planning board thank you. I am
james lee forecaster and
demographic research andist with the
strategic
projects division. I have the team
members
here today for the
project.
lisa
and bob and
colin and the division
chief, kerry mccarthy here today.
for
today's informational briefing for
the planning board, we have
the community trends report. A look
at montgomery
county communities since 2010. The
new publication
by the research and strategic projects
division
is the culmination of more than two
years of work by
the staff members here. We are delighted
to bring it to
you today.
we
will go over the project background
and discuss
key findings divided into place, people
and
housing. Then we will do a dash board
demo.
we will ask a planning boardmember
to tell
us which communities information you
would like to see
and will conclude with key points
about the report
and our analysis. We do
have a long presentation so a
fair warning here.
first of all, let's start with the
project origins, goals
and methods. Work started in 2024,
and it is
the research division's first
comprehensive study of four small areas
of the
county. Staff previously completed
county-wide level analysis for master
planning
efforts, the report provides
a detailed look all parts of the county
including places where the master plans have not recently
been conducted.
while the report is new to montgomery
county, we
drew inspiration from
organizations across the united states
with
existing level products. For example
we
looked at information from
the new york university center for real
estate and urban policy. We
also looked at information from houston,
texas, portland, oregon, the city
of
chicago, et cetera.
we set out to do the project and we
had several goals
in mind. First, document changing
conditions objectively. Second, inform
policy makers in the public of local
trends
and patterns across the county over
time, and
third support policy and other decision
making with useful
and easily accessible and
understandable data. The report
consists of an online pdf publication
with
38 community profiles --
37 communities and one for the county
as a whole
and
an interactive dashboard. I
will go over the data sources sources
for report.
we used multiple data sources
and analyzed 300 variables and
more
than 30,000
data points. Estimates for 2010, 2016,
2022
which we used for all demographic
and
most of the housing information and
used montgomery county
administrative data reflecting conditions
as of 2024.
the sources include the maryland state
department of assessment
s and taxation property
data. We looked at housing type and
year built information as well as
land
use and development information. We
also pulled informationinformation
montgomery parks
for parkland, local state and national
parkland. Montgomery county office
of
technology and enterprise.
also
we pulled information from
montgomery county public
schools.
finally we
had private
sector information.
in addition to
the land use due to
lack of available historical data
and
slow changes in characteristics of
the
period studied.
a key question to address, how do
we define
communities.
a community is often
subjectively defined.
however
a quantitative analysis
needs set boundaries
over time. We see
how each of them divides up
montgomery county. The county has
a lot of
boundary types. Census
bureau
boundaries. Census designated
places and municipalities as shown
on the
left, and we looked at the
own master plan areas and the areas
themselves and other
geographies
and zip codes. We consulted with
planning staff to understand
community boundaries
and sentiments.
do residents consideration themselves
as residents
of silver spring,
bethesda, et cetera and how do the
existing boundaries for existing geographies line
up with
people's perceptions?
ultimately our efforts to
define areas that define
communities for this analysis
resulted in
37 community trend areas as shown
in the map.
we
wanted complete coverage of the county.
we
needed concrete, consistent non-
overlapping boundaries.
it requires information for the same set
of areas over time. We needed a
reasonable number of distinct communities
to analyze. If you have too
many areas, that means bigger areas
that could divide
up distinct community
s
ies
too many means multiple small area
that may introduce noise into
the analysis.
in addition
our data
available at the appropriate geographic
levels. Really to satisfy
the
criteria we
aggregated census block
groups.
we also presented
them sbreshlly to planning department
leadership for additional
feedback.
>> let me
go back to the
map itself. They are included in this map.
we question
is how do we describe
these communities. What indicators
do we
want to use for this report? We focussed
on
land use, demographics and
housing characteristics and considered
which
characteristics are the most commonly
reported
and typically ones from a planning
perspective.
also our
data available over
time they are
the
indicator s and what is a reasonable
number of indicators to cover a range
of topics?
not
so meaningful information is repetitive
and has no
significant value.
we organized them into place, people
and housing. For the place people,
we focused
on land use and development information
to
describe the built environment and the
natural environment as well
as publicly accessible facilities
and
amenities that are offered to the
broader
community, different types of services
including those related
to physical safety, health care,
education, recreation and food security.
the people
theme encompasses the demographics
of residents, racial diversity, english
usage and ability,
household composition, economic status,
indicators
such as education
and income.
housing type and age. Homeownership
and housing
affordability indicators.
these provide
a picture of
t
he current
housing landscape and are compared
across
jurisdictions and within a
nationwide context.
>> for the
record I will be first starting with
the key
findings. This explores two
main components. I will
walk through the major findings at
the
county level and then into specific
ctas. It
reports each environment inin 2024
when
the data was
collected.
we looked at eight kinds of places
of interest. In total, in 2024 the
county had 37 fire stations, 23 police
facilities, 31 health care
facilities, hospitals, treatment centers.
over
500 places of worship. 200
public schools. 50 recreation centers.
22 libraries. 238 grocery stores which
we define
as super markets and don't include convenient stores.
we found while places of interest
are distributed across the county
larger
and more density have
a higher concentration of the amenities.
rockville on the left has a far greater
number
of facilities and amenities,
101 than
trevillo, only one place of worship
withins
it boundaries. Rockville has a
population of
67,000 to 10,800. The supply
of
amenities
places of interest are
often clustered.
land use in the
county. Three major land uses cover
77% of the
county's area.
that is
followed by parks and open space and
agculture
land at
23%.
accounting for all
of the land use
types, 85% is already developed
or unavailable for new development.
that begs the question
of how we can continue to build in
the
county. Growth
relies on previously developments,
parking lots
or leveraging rights to expand existing buildings.
each land use type. We will start
with residential land. It
is notable that single family detached
homes occupy a
disproportionate amount of residential
land comprising 45% of the housing
stock take up 91% of
residential land area.
the county must now make
the most of its available
space. The challenge is to find room
for housing.
looking at residential land use at the
cta level.
single family
detached home occupy the greater level
at
55% of their
land area each.
leesure
world has the greatest share
at 27% and 23% respectively.
in terms of number
of
units
a
closer look at nonresidential land uses
in the county.
commercial development, institutional
facilities
and cultural properties. The office
and the
retail development occupy less than
2%. Institutional
and community facilities such
as
schools,
federal properties and
cultural properties only take up 1%
of
the county's land use. The map on
the right shows
where the land use is located in the
county with
commercial activities concentrated
along the I-
270 corridor.
north sda
has the most.
in terms
of retail
activity,
in mapping the
institutional and community
facilities, we noted certain parcels
that
were large.
these
are prominent federal
properties.
the large parcel is
the fda.
so the
policy implication is that while federal
facilities have been
an important part of the land use,
recent changes in the federal
government's
operations
can possibly
identify other spaces.
the county has
a considerable amount
of green space.
aren't 23%
of the county's land is
used
for agricultural
propers.
stream valley parks.
state parks. Reservoirs and water
sheds
owned by wssc. We included land
for outdoor public recreation and
natural
resource management under our definition
of parkland.
the county has a tree canopy of
47%, the percentage
of land shaded by
trees.
now, going deeper into
environmental land use across the
ctas.
85% of it is within
the
agricultural
reserve. Rock
hill orchard. Nearly every community
has
one park, the share of the total land
ranges from 1. 5% or 11
acres to 38% or over
7,000 acres
in clarksburg.
unsurprisingly
commercial areas have greater
tree colors.
25% to 59% in the
more residential sandy
springs.
further analysis
by land use may
be helpful.
>> this is
interesting so far. I
had a question about how we are
classifying ag
land. Are we
using the current
use
or are we talking about land
in production.
I am just kind of
curious. 70,000 is less
than the ag reserve
which makes
sense. I am just
curious how we are calculating that.
all of
the land use data we use the parcel
level
file. These are using the land
use category that our parcel layer
file has. It
is not necessarily specific land which
is used for
agricultural purposes. It is coded
as that in our parcel file.
>> okay.
thanks. That
makes sense.
>> in regards to tree
canopy, I am pleased to see
47% is
covered with
trees. Where there are more single
family units you see more tree covers.
is that true or is that
in regard to the office space?
>>
we are
seeing it at a general level and in
the more residential level there is
a higher percentage of tree
canopies.
where is the other
15%?
there could be
other parcels in
the county coded as
agriculture.
>> you know
one of them.
I am sure that there are others too.
>> the last
takeaway is around complete
communities. This envisions
communities to have a vibrant mix
of
housing types
and employment.
this concept reappeared
as a theme when examining land
use and
community facilities.
the map on the left is north
bethesda with
many services spread out across the
area.
the other is connecticut, a
lower density area and fewer of the
services here are available. Therefore
it is important to note
a complete community must be adjusted
based
on factors including location and
development
density. Now I will pass it to james to
go through the people findings.
>> now we will discuss key
finding findings
under the people theme. We will focus
on
age, racial diversity, english usage
and
ability, education and income.
we analyzed changes from 2010
to 2016.
these characteristics are
commonly analyzed and
compared in our
master planning work
we look at the pieces of information
to see who lives
in the plan
area.
I will walk through some of the
major findings.
montgomery count
I increased by 12% from 2010 to
2022.
that was for a gain
of 110
residents.
these have the largest population
growth and are
among the top ten in
percentage growth.
they gained about
52% of the
county's growth.
clarksburg experienced the greatest
population growth.
18,000 people or
137% increase.
particularly outside
of places here where population growth has
been concentrated.
let's look
at the information by age group.
the county's population has continued
to trend older. The
county's population in the 65
and older group increased by
55%.
conversely young populations grew
at a
much slower rate. County-wide, the
young
adult population 18 to 34
grew by by adding more than
15,000 residents.
if you look at the graph where
we have zero to
four year s
s that population was
growing while the under age
5 and under climbed to
2%.
older adults made up
an increasing share of the population
county-wide.
growing from 12% to
16% of
all residents.
here we see
seven communities where the residents
65
and older
doubled.
>> this means people have
aged.
>> it could be people
aging in
place. It could be older
folks moving in. We do
not have the
information
.
>>
it is only 12
years. You are experiencing
a percentage increase in the amount
of age.
that indicates an influx of
older aged population pushing
up. There has to be some aging in
place but
that indicates to me it is coming
from an
older population than we were previously
getting. Going back to slide 22, the
best explanation
for that slide is young families cannot
afford toto live here information.
if we keep going
the way that we are going we are
not going to have young families the
way that
we used to. I couldn't afford to
live here now.
>> it is when the start of the
baby boomer generation moved
into the 65 plus age group.
>> yes.
that
is what I was going
to say.
people are
having less children. That is what
it seems.
>> because it is expensive to
have them.
the best
and most consistent explanation is
it is really
expensive and younger families
can't afford it.
the cost of day care is more than
my mortgage. The cost of my mortgage
is insane.
we can try to explain it allall want.
it is cost.
you are drawing the conclusion. They
are sitting here to
tell us.
>> we will talk about children
here in
a little bit.
let me wrap up the portion about
aging. Looking at
how communities are aging, only two
ctas had more
than 20%
of
residents 65 and older. On the right by
2022 the number of
communities with more than
20% of residents included to
seven. These are in different parts
of the county from
a couple of communities in the north
to others further south such as
potomac. Given the trend of an
aging population and across many communities
this
indicates a
potentially growing demand.
certain services, infrastructure,
housing. You can see it from the map
on the right, some
of the communities with the larger
concentrations of
the older adult population are in
more remote parts of
the
county lacking important facilities
and other health
care facilities.
it may take an additional effort to
support
the older
adult population. We will get to
children. We are working through through
age groups. Communities
have a wide variation in the amount
of
changes their young adult population
of
the 18-34. Three communities with
the
highest and the lowest change in absolute
terms. On the left side of the chart
silver
springs, rockville.
they are sizeable
numbers.
tacoma park, germantown
and east
silver spring.
the
working population is a
critical part of the
county's workforce.
we see a
slowly growing young young
population.
it could really present aa for
the labor market.
from 2010 to
2022 the number of households
in the
county
overall grew.
the
this trend contrasts with the higher
growth rates of other household types that you see on
the graph.
with the rate of
households with children declined
from 34% to
32% from 2010
to 2022 here we show the three
communities with the largest shifts
in the percentage of
households with children in the upward
and the downward
directions. Many communities had a
declining percentages
of households with children on the right-
hand side
due to weak growth or
declines in the
children population.
you look on the
left side of the chart, we
have three community
s
ies this is due to stronger growth
in the children
population relative to the
children population itself.
given the trends
that we see
here it points
to a lower potential command for
facilities like schools
and other
s and more long-
term concerns.
I am still
focused on
households.
higher percentages of families
with children are spread across
the county.
clarksburg
in the north
to further south.
on
the right there are
11cta ben orr single
person households. Clustered along
our urbanized corridors. Up
I-270, u.s.
29 and metro
red line.
including all of the
burdens that border dc like
chevy chase and
silver springs.
the county has
growing racial diversity. After
2010 montgomery county's population
became a
majority of people
with color.
they experienced significant growth
with the exception
of the population which declined
by 9%.
the hispanic
population had the
largest gain with
60,000 residents.
it was more than triple the
growth rate.
the large bar on the
right
includes people with the highest
increase of
108%. The
growth in this group started at
smaller numbers than the
other groups.
in
201018 communities had a
population with the majority of
people in color. It increased to 22
by
2022.
however communities
vary widely in their racial composition.
this shows the top three communities
in terms of
the percentage
of each major racial
or ethnic group in
2022. We see the communities with
the
highest percentages of black residents.
the highest percentage
of asian
residents. In the middle of the county
we see
the highest percentages of
hispanic residents, the ones in blue.
connecticut, there
are no
crossroads and glen
mont. So, given
the increasing racial diversity across
the
county in many of the
communities, this trend really indicates
a growing demand for specific services
that
may need to be culturally
sensitive, geographically concentrated
and tailored to
the needs of certain
groups.
making sure different populations
do not face significant barriers
to accessing the facilities and
amenities. Now to
the topic
of
english language usage and ability.
this is related
to the growing diversity here in the
county.
montgomery county gainedgained
residents who speak a nonenglish
language at home with 26% increase
from 2010
to
2022. More people reported speaking
english, less than very well. Closely
matching the
12% in the
total population.
with the
residents speaking a nonenglish language
at
home, it increased to
38% to 42% from 2010 to 222.
as I mentioned it before,
growing racial diversity is related
to the
growing number of residents speaking
a nonenglish
language at home, and the growth can
be seen at the community
level. On the map on the left
in
2010, only
three communities were the majority
of residents
speaking a nonenglish language at
home.
connecticut, crossroads, glenmont
and silver spring. By 2022, the map
on the
right has grown
to 90.
notably some of the communities are
the same ones with
the highest percentages of hispanic
or
black residents as seen in the map from two slides ago.
to education and income, there
is a clear relationship between these
two indicators which the maps
show. Specifically we can see a
highly educated population correlates
with higher incomes.
on the left,
six communities clustered have the
highest
educational attainment levels in 2022.
in all of
these more than 75% of adults
ages 25 and over had at least a bachelor's
degree. They had a
bachelor's degree or they may
have had a graduate or a
professional degree.
it is well above the county wide number
for
more than
60%. The
map on the right, the same set of
communities
have the highest
average household incomes in
2022. All of these communities in
the southwest
part of the
county,
potomac,
last slide in the people section.
meanwhile,
if we look at the communities with
the lowest
educational attainment and income
levels there is a
similar correlation between the two
indicators. On the
left, nine communities scattered across
the county had
less than 50% of adults 25 and over
with at least a bachelor's degree
in
2022. Six
of those community ies appear on the
map on
the right. That shows the eight communities
with
the lowest average household income
in
2022, all below
$125,000.
despite
lower incomes, all
have noteworthy educational attainment
levels. East silver
spring, flower hill and montgomery
village, about
40% of the adults ages 25 and over
had at least a bachelor's degree.
that exceeds the national raterate
34%.
given the wide range, many of
the communities would benefit from having
more
opportunities for higher education
that can help
residents find higher paying jobs
and locating educational and training
facilities within
less economically
advantaged communities.
that would allow
residents access to higher education.
now, I will
hand it off for the key findings on the housing
section.
>> james,
this is our last key findings bucket
with
housing. As a reminder for the topic
we looked
at data on housing stocks, housing
typology and age, ownership
age, housing value cost and cost burden.
similar to the people indicators we
analyzed
temporal changes from 2010 to 2016
to 2022.
most of the
indicators are from the
five-year estimate.
I will follow a similar
structure of providing county-
level information and then diving
into cta level data.
housing growth for the county over
the past
several decades it is evident the
county
is seeing more multi family than single
family housing growth.
construction peaked
in the 1980s. Since
2010, 12% of the existing housing
stock, a
little more
than 47,000 units have been built.
of
the units built after 2010,
61% in multi family
and 29% as single family
detached homes. Most built recently
are larger high rise rather than
smaller garden style buildings. Speaks
to
a policy indication around the need
for diverse
housing units to help people remain
in the communities as
their housing needs change.
we can look
at the average age
of
housing type. Townhouses and multi
family
units are younger with average ages
of 35 to
37 respectively. The map shows
the pattern of housing development
in the county.
tacoma
park, silver spring, kensington
as showed on the map have the oldest
housing units and the lighter
shade found in great seneca and clarksburg.
they have seen most of the growth since
2010.
these maps show where thethe
housing has grown. Clarksburg had
the most
single family and overall growth since
2010 with
a total of 5,500
single family units accounting for
88% of
the housing production
during this time.
as the
housing stock
expanded homeownership ates
remain an important
issue. A change that can be
explained by multi family
development.
in accordance with the
trend renter occupied households
increased from 24%
to
31% in 2022.
in 2010 there were only three
ctas were
er occupied households were the
majority. By 2022
the number increased to five ctas
with
north bethesda and seneca
being the two. While they were not
renter
households the majority of
ctas, germantown, bethesda
and rockville
saw a significant increase
in this time.
it still remains a majority
owner
occupied, related to the
single
family homes.
communities such as
travilah and upper rock creek. These
are the
bars on the far left of the graph.
conversely those with lower percentage
such
as silver spring and great seneca
had significantly
lower homeownership rates of
33% and 19% respectively.
while the planning response can't
dictate housing
tenure, we are embarking on further
needs to determine whether there is
more need for more for sale or
rental housing.
now I will discuss housing affordability
indicators.
this
is compared to the national value
of $261,000. This is
lower than the lowest
cta average
value.
>> it is all
home value.
>>
everything.
300,000 to
500,000 was the
lower
average.
up here is highlights where home
values are growing and where they
remained
relatively unchanged. Communities
in blue experienced the
greatest increase in home
values. Their growth rates exceed
that of the
county, 27% between 2010 and
2022. The high income areas
of chevy chase and bethesda and
areare to employment centers reforming
the
need to access places of work through
transportation networks
and diversify the location of
employment centers across the county.
communities in orange saw little to
no growth
and include damascus,
leesure world and burtonsville.
a look at average housing costs.
as seen by the graphs housing cost
for
renters shown on the left in orange
increased at
more than 2. 5 times that of
homeowners shown on right in the blue.
this increase
for renters out placed enflation during
the period.
the trend is contributing to
rising inequality
and rising house
affects renters.
a closer look at renter
occupied households. A subset of communities with
at least 25% renter occupied
households. While some communities
including redland-shady
grove, chevy chase and takoma
park, others experienced
below average around 29% increases
in
rent. Great seneca,
glenmont and
fairland.
now
colin issing to give a demo of all
of
the data that you just heard and more.
>> good afternoon. For the
record I
am colin
m
cnamaraa. This is
37ctas allowing users to visualize
and compare information about place,
people,
housing at both the county and the
community level. I
will walk through the main tabs and
highlight
how the tool supports planning and
policy
discussions. We will start where we
are right now on the general
tab, the dashboard's landing page.
by default it
displays county-wide data at the top
and by
default it displays county-wide data
at the
top and I can select cta from drop
down. Chair harris, can you do us
the honor
of selecting a cta for us.
>> why
not try my
hometown of ta, t takoma park.
>>
okay.
we used the filter at
the top to select takoma park. It
is
highlighted on the map. A summary
of
area, population and housing units
appear on the
right. There is a view button opening
the
full profile from the community trends
report. I will click
that really
quick.
shoutout
to our graphic designer megan
irving who designed these
amazing documents.
>> are
these generated instantly based
on the criteria or are these general
overviews?
>> they are not. They are
general
overviews living on
a server somewhere.
this
dashboard follows the natural order
of the presentation.
once
you select your
cta, it is there for all time until
you
change it again.
it
focuses on physical
characteristics, land use and places
of interest.
charts summarizing development
and land use by area. I can click
the charts
or use the drop down and toggle
between ctas and county-wide views.
I can
click on the chart. I can multiselect
within
a box or I
can use the fitter here. If I
want to see montgomery county I can
see it
at all times,
whether depending whether any
cta I am in.
up next places of
interest. That is just the section to the
right with
the toggle buttons. So,
for places of interest, amenities
like schools, parks, libraries, type
and selecting a point
reveals detailsdetails as name and
address. This can be used
at the county-wide level as well.
go ahead and
click on a place of interest. I have
selected a church.
people
tab summarizes demographic characteristics,
population, households, age distribution
and
household types.
education, race and ethnicity. Data
can
be viewed 2010, 2016,
2022.
housing tab is up next.
it provides housing conditions, type,
year built,
home values, housing costs.
as with other tabs
the tab can be viewed at the
cta
or county level. Again there is a
lot in this
dashboard.
it is meant for every scale,
monitor size. Mobile which is 95%
complete. It took a lot to create
different charts.
data was reengineered and
republished to
fit schematics for a particular chart.
we are done with takoma park for now.
we will see it again right now.
the comparison
section it is
going to be showing all of the ctas
at the
same time and it allows users
to compare
ctas across different indicators.
population change, tree canopy and
montgomery
county shown as a reference.
users can switch between different
views and
filter to specific
ctas.
if anyone sees a topic. I will click
on that. Very straightforward interaction.
all I
am using is the mouse
here. If I can select a couple of
ctas, I have a filter in the top left.
now I can just filter
a
couple. I selected five.
hit apply.
montgomery county will always be there
as a reference. There are
scatter plots down below for three
particular topics. Age 65 plus
and people of color.
education and income.
clicked on a map. Clicked on the cta
of the map. See information specific
to different
topics.
average housing value, average housing
age. I can interact with the housing
plot to filter out the plot.
>> complements
the written report by making something
more accessible
and comparable across communities.
profiles, documentation and methodology
are
accessible within the dashboard.
thank you.
there is a valid section. We have
an
appendix for all of our data sources.
video sources available on youtube.
we are here
to answer any
questions and the project page
on montgomery planning.
>> we have
a couple
of slides to
wrap up.
>> I have to say good job.
>> as we wrap up I would like to
reiterate key points about the point
and
our
analysis. In line
with the project goals to document
changing conditions and inform the
public of trends
and patterns. We
published it to provide robust information
on
communities across the county and
looked at 37
communities covering the entire county
and analyzed 300 variables and more
than
30,000 data points. The information
from the
report helps people understand that
conditions vary in
different places and
over time. It also showcases
montgomery county's rich diversity
in the population, housing stock, and
places.
finally the third goal is to support
policy and decision
making and throughout the presentation
we made
statements about policy implications
for land use planning that
came out in our analysis. As a
broader
er summary here are the crucial
points. A complete community must
be
adjusted based on location and
development density.
a community
in the more rural areas of the county
will not look
the same as a
complete community in more urbanized
area like silver
spring. What makes a community more
complete when it has a range of
land uses, housing types to
meet
a variety of needs for a diverse set
of people. It must be supported
in the county with
the infrastructure.
we should see other places grow and
not
decline if the existing infrastructure
will support it.
new land use strategies that facilitate
redevelopment and advance new development
opportunities continue to be
required. So with so much of the
county's land already developed or
not available for
new development, we need to continue
to come up with
new methods and ideas to be able
to accommodate future growth. The
fourth
point, housing unit growth is important
to economic development as the working
age population has grown more slowly
than the county's population overall.
continuing housing growth is critical
to
affordability which will help the
county retain
and attract people, and especially
working age people
who are the backbone of the labor
force and are needed
to support the county's long-
term economic growth. Finally, one
last
mention, we might have
more recommendations for specific
communities as we discuss the
data with the planners and with our
staff members
in the future.
overall we have done a
lot to put
the report
together. We are noticing
things that require
more explanation.
and
this concludes our presentation. Thank
you.
>> thank you. This
is amazing. Absolutely amazing. We
should disseminate it to, you know,
all parties that can take advantage
of
it and to
drive data and
inform decisions.
I am sure the planners and
the chambers and land use attorneys
would need
to see this. Please get it
out to them.
I know I will come back with
some questions. One question that
I did have, is
east silver spring, they lost like
2,700 people, families,
households. These are young
18 to 34.
where do they go?
takoma park
lost two, but they grew with the children.
I was
trying to figure out how
that works.
thank you so much.
>> just to quickly answer the question,
that is an
area where, you know, one of the questions
that
we had ourselves.
we would like to dig more in
to the question. Yes. We did
see a loss of young adults. We
saw a growth in children, the children
population.
so, that is a bit of a mystery in
and
of itself. Maybe there might be additional
information that
we have not looked at. You know, we
can talk
to some of the staff members to see
if they
know more about the community and
maybe they might have more
insight into what is going on demographically.
>> thank you. >> really.
that was an amazing job. I don't know
if that was the first time. I think
we should continue
to update this. You have
the base now.
every other year when
the data has more
change. We compare to see how things
are going. I have a few
things that I have
seen.
based on the report
the lower income is not where we are
having
the multi
families, okay.
the younger people are where we have
the multi
families. We want
to attract younger
people inin here.
ownership or rental, but I have
seen an issue. I have seen
it without seeing the report.
it is quite obvious that we are
building multi family and are
mostly rental.
that
produced the homeownership for younger
generation.
older generation is not
moving.
so, there
is no
sense of doing that.
even if they want to sell it, the
prices are
getting higher
prices. How can we?
the real estate is the safest thing
for younger
generations.
how can we give that
opportunity for younger
generations to build
wealth. My children are one
example that are losing a lot of example
for
rental, okay.
I keep sitting
there saying just buy something. But
what they want
to buy is not where they want to be.
they
couldn't afford that.
they are all going to bebe rent.
they are not really affordable. They
don't
create wealth. Wealth for our younger
generation
they want to have that wealth. The
reason
that they, I think, I am just thinking
that a
lot of the younger generation are
not going to have more
children, because they don't want
to
raise the
children in a small area. They
want to have space with the dogs and
kids, but they
can't afford it. They decide, okay,
we are not
going to have children. We are just
going to have one.
so, how are we going to be, you know, planning for that.
I don't know.
not expecting you have the answer.
>> I am not a young adult anymore, but the
rest of the other
three staff
members are.
how can we afford to
live here and buy a home.
>> I know
you say
that, but I am not seeing that. I
am looking at
our experts that they do all of
the plannings. He keeps saying
production, production, production.
the thing showed
that we are done the production.
>>
we have not
done the production.
>> we have done
comparing the
2010 to 2020 you
were showing, 2022, there
is production.
there has been production, but the
ownership hasn't increased
at all. The homeownership is one
reason people want to
move.
they don't want to be a renter all
of their life.
if they have a family, they want to
own
something. That is what creates
the wealth for future. That happened
to me.
I know a lot of my friends.
surely if you worked for government,
that is the
only thing that can allow you to have
some wealth.
how can we provide that opportunity
for our children?
>> we are
trying.
>> just to respond, sorry you are
in a conversation. Thanks for sticking
around. I
think that was the experience of an
older generation. I don't think it
is an
experience of a generation younger
than me. It takes so
much longer to get together the wealth
necessary to put
a down payment and purchase a house
than it did even
a decade ago. Value
in my neighborhood have gone up 45%
depending
how you look at it. If I was forced
to
give a 20%
or 5% down payment on what I
paid, that is a scale difference.
that requires a much higher base to
purchase from.
when you are talking about a post
baby
boom generation or
older gen x generation, the
inflation adjusted cost of the home
was considerably lower
and you had much more investment in
loans and things like that
lowering the overall entry point that
you do not
have now. We have taken 91%
of the residential space, sectioned
it off for single
family homes. We cannot build that
because we are
not build out.
we can only
build multi family in 9% of the county.
there are hardly any spaces
left. You run the numbers and what
you see is
what we get. Creep, creep, creep,
steep. That
is where we have come to this point.
people do
want to buy. People want homeownership.
is it a different market for
multi family and a market for single
family detached homeownership which
we can't
build anymore.
>> I am not talking
about just
single family, okay. You have
townhomes, two by twos. I
see the architect come with a really
innovative
ideas that allow --
I am not
talking single family or anything.
you said the
rent increased by 40% while
the mortgage has gone
up 14%.
it allows people to have a
better quality of
life.
what I am
challenging us to think about
all other different types of housing
types that allows
ownership. That is what I
am talking about.
we just started to
approve those in the past
years. Hopefully we will see them
in the market in the
next couple of
years.
we
are going to wrap this up.
>> I
like your presentation.
>> I
was wondering if
there is a cost of analysis versus
the
selling price of the unit or the house
based on
the county.
one of those is the
cost of construction and the cost
of housing. I
was wondering if it is
different, the cost in east county
is different than
the cost in west county. If they
are the same, you know, what is
the obstacle of building, you
know, multi family dwelling units
in west
county opposed to east county if the
cost
will be the same, and you can sell
it for
more moneymoney west county than you
could in
east county.
>> for the record,
kerry mccarthy, division chief of
research in
strategic projects. The general answer
to that is
land costs, land values are a lot
higher in west county than east county.
construction
costs, you are drawing materials,
out of county,
out of state, regional. It really
s down to the land value.
>> is
it based on location, demographics
or is
it based upon scarcity?
>> kind of all of the above.
school districts. Perceived quality
of
school districts is a big driver
and location.
>> so,
in west county there
are less public transportation opportunities,
correct.
right. However, how does that compute
with
what you just said because there are
less
public transportation opportunities.
so, the
land value is higher because there
is less transportation options.
>>
there are
schools, access to parks,
amenities, commuting.
>> you
are talking about a place r-200 or
r-1. Your house may cost 3. 5
but it is sitting on an acre and a
half of
land, and you can't build anything
but a single
family home on it anyway.
>> if it
were zoned differently --if we
had comparable zones in west and east
county
and they were zoned the same, right.
would the
value of the land be different in
west county than the value
of the land in east
county?
>> kind of
depends.
>> why. >>
why?
>> some of it is commute from
dc,
transit is a benefit and driving on
the westside of
the county it is
>> I think
when we would look
at availability of space, the more space
available in west county than
there is in east county. And
the cost of construction
is the same, but land value is not based
upon scarcity,
but some other intangibles. We can
look
at opportunities for expanding construction and building
in west county as opposed to
east county. The variables you mentioned,
you know, school performance, whatnot,
we also
have to examine how we
can improve
our school's performances and
demographics, I guess, in east county,
or find some
kind of way to limit
the estimation of value based upon schools
only and demographics. Because the
proximity to
metro station that you brought up doesn't
really particularly fit for west county,
as it does in the central
part of the
county and east county. So I just
find it
curious on how homes are valued in
our
county that limit
the opportunity for homeownership.
>>
yep.
>> and then
I've really liked this information. Final
question is how
will the local citizen, who is
not a developer and is just a
consumer use
this information to their benefit?
>>
so
first of all, we pick key demographic
and
land use in housing characteristics,
that give up an overarching
picture of what the community had
looks like. So
probably for the average citizen,
you know, most people may not know
exactly
what the data points are. What does
our
community look like? You know, they
may
have some perception
of well, this community is
wealthier. Demographics may
be this. You know, percentage of people. But,
you know,
we want them to have the correct information. So
this
is suppose
to be an authoritative source we're providing
to
the community. And this is suppose
to be,
you know, a first place for them
to stop at, to
look at the information, learn about,
you know,
what their community looks like. And
have the kinds of conversations that
we are having right now. Ask questions
and think
about, well, what about these other things
that may not be published? You know,
in the
report. You know, why is this
going on? And then, you know, perhaps maybe
start engaging with
our community leaders to, you know, answer
some of these questions and
maybe drive policy change as well.
>> okay, linden,
do you have
any questions, comments?
>> no questions. Just somewhat,
a lot of thanks to
the team. This was
really incredible stuff. I really
enjoyed reading through the report. I didn't
quite
make it through the whole thing yet. But
I enjoy the parts I got through,
and I appreciate this presentation.
it will be
a valuable resource to plug in
and support so
many policy plans and conversations. Yeah,
I really look forward to kind of continuing
to chew on a lot of
this and have conversations around
it. So yeah, just thanks so
much for your work on it.
>> we appreciate it. We're going to
take
a 30-minute break and come
back, so 30 minutes from
now is like 1:30. Thank you so much. We
look
--great, great work. Thank you.
after a 30-minute break ]
z
>>>
item seven and eight, item seven is
dps zoning and site plan enforcement. And
they will cover
the site plan mou and
enforcement coordination. And the
second item, number eight, land development
will present the right of way stormwater
and
wells and septic. You have to admit,
I haven't seen it so lively here in a while,
so
thank you
for the dps and the dot team for coming today. So
we'll
start off with robin kronenberg, deputy
director, telling us what we're going
to be hearing today.
>> thank you,
mr. Chair. Thank you
to our partners
with dot and with dps. Definitely
have
a good turnout here. The board did
ask for a briefing back in the fall. It's
taken a
little while to get this together,
but
we really appreciate your
partnership here. And, you know, we
work with everyone
here on a daily
basis. Our coordination efforts, in many
respects, behind the scenes. So what
you
see is kind of a final report that
comes to
you. A lot of times, it is what all these
people collectively have worked together
with our staff to bring to you. I
also wanted
to say we really appreciate their
feedback and their participation in
the community planning academy. I
know you were, you
helped represent one of
the activities we had. But
both agencies provided input in the
participation and in the modules. So
the presentations
today are intended to be informational
and provide the
board an overview of a variety of
elements that are
a part of our regulatory
reviews and post approvals. Again,
our regulatory reviews include,
but aren't limited to stormwater management,
storm drains, zoning, well, septic, right
of way, and then
the post approvals are
record plats and site plan enforcement,
and I know
from the dps and dot standpoint, a
lot of the right of ways
and the control work that's done. So
these
two items will run continuously together. So
feel
free to ask them questions. I think
they
will have breaks at certain points,
if you want to hold
your questions until those points. But
I'm sure the team will be able to
navigate
the questions and the answers. I'd
like to turn it over. I think
it's to greg and victor. Is that correct? And
then I'll let the respective people
that
are up here introduce their teams
if that
is okay.
>> can I just
say, I just want to to really thank
you
for all of
you
guys being here. Being the director of funding services.
and
I
can attest to the dedication. How
passionate they
are for
the work
we do. The good relationship
and coordination with us right
now. I personally am
privileged
to know them, to work with them, thanks
them for everything they did together
and for everything that
they are doing right now. Thank you for being here.
>> for those
that were not a part of
our morning session, commissioner,
vice chair linden is
participating virtually today, so
he is here. Thank you.
>> chair and members
of the planning board. I'm victor salazar,
division chief for
zoning and code compliance at
dps. I'm joined by greg
nichols, section manager per code compliance
and brian, who
is our program managerrer and
manages our field inspection teams. With
us
today, our inspectors who
were seated behind us. Just to
give you an idea. Guys, keep standing
for a section. We are only missing
two on the team, but raise
your hand. Patrick, he's inside the beltway,
okay. And then just going
north of that, we
are missing amir aberdeen, but we've
got alvin clarkson, basically
your guy in the east. Just above him
in montgomery village area, going
up
towards gaithersburg, you have neman. And
then you've got oscar hildalgo, mostly
in the clarkburg area. But he's
in training still. Really great. We've got
him all over the place. We
are also missing andre
peters who is gaitherstown, germantown west.
>>
I've been working with alvin since
he was assigned to silver springs,
so I appreciate the work he's been
doing. Probably been at least 15
years that we've been working together,
so I appreciate their work.
>> today, our portion of the briefing
focuses on how planning board decisions
translate
into what actually gets built
on the ground. Specifically through
our certified
site plan compliance program. This
is not a policy pitch. It's
an operational walk through, how the
system works, how we coordinate
where accountability lives, and what we've
learned. After
this section, linda and her team will
walk you through the land development
side
of the house, which picks up where
our compliance role intersects with infrastructure delivery.
this agenda follows the life cycle
of a project, from planning
board approval to inspection
to enforcement to lessons
learned. This mou exists
because approvals don't enforce themselves. The
mou was
created
to remove ambiguity, who expects what, when planning
is looped in,
and who is accountable when conditions
aren't
met. Before the mou responsibilities were
implied,
after
the mou, they are explicit. Integrity
of the planning board conditions and
the language that you put
in the resolutions in the program
tables that we follow. And so if you
don't --if you don't
get an opportunity to see those
plans after staff reports have submitted
them
to you, and they've been certified,
we brought an
example of some of the plans that
we
often refer to when our inspectors
were out in the
field, and those are sitting in front
of us right now. Go ahead.
what we want to emphasize
with regards
to framework and
objectives. The mou gives us predictability. It
provides us clear
handoffs, and there is
no duplication. This framework is
less about bureaucracy
and more about preventing gaps. Gaps
that
show up later
as complaints, delays, or displacement
disputes. Talks about collaboration between
our agencies,
and it dictates to us how
we
enforce conditions, when our inspectors
discovered what you put
in the resolution, and the program
table differ than what is
being constructed in the field and
how we correct those, how we
make corrections to those mistakes. You
can go to the
next one. The objectives, we
want to clarify agency roles. Ensure
consistency in compliance of planning
board conditions. Provide a structured
response
to community complaints, and promote inner agency efficiencies.
okay. You can go.
about responsibilities under the mou.
planning
sets
the conditions. You guys
receive suggested, suggestions from
planning staff. You deliberate and
you decide what you
will amend and what
you will keep. And what happens is
in those certified
plans, transmitted to us
electronically. You review permits
for conformity, provide
electronic access, and participate
in scheduled coordination. So if it
is
not with you, that stuff, we are definitely
meeting with
jason
and robert and their staff. Yep. So
dps ensures those conditions were
met in the
field, and we
do this through
inspections, regularly coordinated
meetings within
our department and
with planning. And we perform investigations with
regards to
deviations from what is being constructed
in the field,
and then we coordinate with
planning staff for bond releases and reviews.
it
is not, it is routine and not reactive. We
have weekly, monthly, and quarterly
touch points,
which means
issues are addressed early. Before
they escalate. You don't hear about
most
of these because they were resolved before
they become problems. So
right here is where
we talk about this slide, highlights those key coordination channels.
before the projects reach the
planning board, drc will meet with
all
of the relevant agencies and utilities
and anyone involved in the regulatory
process to
meet with the applicants
and discuss the over--the overlapping regulatory
issues that
may impact their project. Then we
have inner
agency inspection leadership. This
is josh k.,
this is greg and brian. And they
meet regularly to talk about emerging
issues
that are happening on the ground. On
thursday
morning, we have
a senior management meeting internally
with dps, with josh, and that is where
we take one of these projects
and one of these plans, and we peel
back the onion and go in depth,
and we talk about what is
happening today, what are the emerging issues
that we need to address, and
how was the project progressing?
beyond the
mou, and we're talk to talk
about how the mou between
the ways will become operationallized. Coordination
here is routine and not reactive.
excuse me, I just said
that. This is where policy becomes inspection. Multiple
touch points per month means we're
not waiting for complaints
to tell us something is wrong. We
found out about them early, and
then we communicate across agencies
to determine
what the best action is
to bring the developer into
compliance. Okay, you
can go to the next one. It
shows what compliance
looks like on the ground. It's
about adherence
to the resolution program table. Construction
compliance
is about sequencing. Doing the right
things in the right order.
team coordination is what
keeps this from becoming siloed,
so we partner with dot, planning,
right of way, our developers, our
engineers, and our utility
companies to make sure
these projects are being constructed
in a
manner that you have outlined in
your
resolution and your program tables.
weekly briefing, this
is not a check box
meeting. It's where emerging risks surface
early. And
this is where we deeply and in depth
discuss what
is going on, on
the ground, and determining what we
need
to do to correct those violations
that we
find or those failed inspections that
we find
out in the field. What this
is, senior management visibility. It
is intentional, and it reinforces
accountability. So not
only are inspectors and the frontline
managers involved in
making sure these certified site plans
are
complied with, but I, as a division
chief,
are actively involved
in ensuring that
happens also. Most problems
are preventable with
early clarity. Early meetings, clear
language, and dashboards
have reduced friction out in the
field. Clear site plan language
saves everyone time. That includes
the inspectors in the
applicants in planning, so thank you
very much
to planning staff for making sure
that
we have clear and
defensible language, when we
are holding our developers, people
out in the field,
holding them accountable for what
you
have put down on these plans. I'm
just going to go through three
projects that show how these projects
show
the program and
how it works at scale. One of them
is
a project that came
online about ten
years ago, which is the
premium outfits. And this is without
reading everything
on the slide, what they brought into
the northern part of the county is
an economic hub that brought jobs
and provides
positive economic output
for the county today.
it is
much more closer to this board's
membership. It's the marriott headquarters. You
can go
to the next one. What marriott headquarters brings,
if
you think about the brand
of marriott, we are talking about
people associate marriott with
success. People associate marriott
with successful
people, bringing in money, people
who are going on vacation, people
who are having corporate
meetings, and
to have marriott headquarters
in bethesda, showcases how
planning has successfully brought
a marquee
organization into bethesda. What bethesda
and the location of
the marriott headquarters also brings
is an
international organization, and we're
talking about
the climate action plan, trying to
reduce vehicle miles traveled
and providing a workplace that would
then a
mile radius that people have access to
restaurants, have access
to shopping, have access to schools. All
the things
that are necessary to have
a community. They are also
located near a
hub of transportation with the bethesda
metro center and seeing the
purple line. So what we have brought
here is an employer, an international employer,
and
they have set
up shop here
in montgomery county. Then
the next one, bethesda. So for
us here, this is a pretty complex
project that
goes to the next page. This is the
scope of the project here.
it's
one thing that we notice, we have
two developers we
are working with. So the project is pretty close to finish.
what has happened is we
have had to
tag team and make sure our staff ensuring that
two developers are meeting their
triggers, that they are adhering to
the resolution
in the program
tables that
you guys have for us. By the numbers.
so
this slide gives you a sense of scale and rhythm,
how this is being exercised,
not that
it just exists. So these numbers
reflect routine activity and
not exceptions. They
show ongoing oversight, not enforcement. And
the
program is active across multiple
projects
at the same time. So the takeaway
here isn't the individual
figures. It's that this
program operates throughout the year. Each
of the question,
why
this matters beyond our two agencies.
fewer downstream
interpretation issues. More predictability
and
fewer surprises late in
construction. And earlier issue identification reduced
the work more efficient resolution.
because coordination
happens early, issues surface sooner. And
the
public benefit here is confidence. That
what
is approved
is actually what gets built.
if
there is one takeaway today that after
going through the previous
22 slides, if you can take away
anything today from what I've delivered here
is
that the importance of collaboration
between our two agencies is what has
made
this program a success. The mou
was entered into 2006. The iteration
of the mou
was signed in 2018. We are currently
in
the process of revising
the mou for the front
planning board
chair and the two directors to
sign in the coming months. But the
slide may read as self-evident, but
in practice, it's
the hardest thing to sustain.
so now
I am going
to end
the slide show here. Dps appreciates
the
division of zoning, appreciates the opportunity
to present the mou and our
code compliance inspection program. After
all, dps is your project partner.
>> I like that,
thank you. I needed that.
>> yeah,
thank
you
so much in explaining the
process, letting us know that
it is not just periodic points
that you go out and check the continuous checking,
and that
our teams are working together. And
so what
I heard you
say is the planning
and the dps people are interacting
--you said every ten days? Is that
what it is? Did
I get that right?
>> no,
what he was referring to is we
have a program now. Mou stipulates
that we inspect all active certified
site plan projects
within once every ten days.
>> okay. >>
now,
when projects are closing in on triggers
like they're trying to get
all their landscaping in, they're
trying to get all their amenities
in, or they're trying to
reach a certain milestone. Our guys
might have to go out there
every day, right?
>> right. >> but
by the
mou, we have to
go out on all
active projects once every
ten days. And even with guys that
are having to fill in
for one another. Somebody goes on
extended leave. They
can all see that dashboard, and that's
the dashboard kind
of thing they're talking about. That
way we
never get behind
on that.
>> okay,
great. Great. That's great to know. It
was the developer
side and not
on
the construction side. Where would
josh plug
in to this project?
>> so
josh works, obviously
with robert. He works with christine,
right? And what's
that division called? She's intake? I
call it
intake.
>> it's environmental climate now. >>
okay, it's environmental climate now. So
josh and
his staff do the forest
conservation, okay? And they do all
preliminary, preliminary plan compliance.
>>
okay.
>> we insist in
that. They help us sometimes. We assist
them sometimes. But he is sort
of a go
between. He's your liaison when it
comes to between staff and our concerns.
>>
right.
>>
the forest conservation.
>> I have
worked with
josh. We've known each other for well over
20 years. So yeah, we collaborate
in that respect. If we see
a problem, you know, we want to bounce
it off of josh and he
bounces off of staff. We want to stay
on the
same page.
>> right. >> the mou allows
anyone at
any time to escalate something, if they don't
agree with
one of our decisions. They could come
to staff and they can escalate it. But
what
we try to do, we make sure we're on
the same page
so that that rarely happens.
>> okay,
great. And
I know those mous are always hard
to, you know,
put together an update, but they are so important
at the end
of the day, so thank you that you
guys work so hard
together to keep it, you
know, up to date periodically. Thank
you
so much.
>> mr. Chair, I would add
that we think the initiators of
the mou back in 2006. So the continuity
has been there. We do
bring it and update it
as much as possible. Usually it's
every two to three years that we're
updating it. I think the most recent
one, and I would say they are
graciously agreed to interpret our expedited
plan approvals as a site plan, so
this is something that we have added
to the mou because
it is not technically a site plan,
but
it will have the same context and
the
same formality that they do. So things
like that,
we would add to
the m, ozarks in
terms of clarity and what.
>> anything
else?
>> I
just wanted to add something.
what dps does
at the zoning
that victor just explained. Only the
conditions that we received that
they review, and then those conditions are approved,
and
it goes
to the resolution. It is like given
to them religiously. I know that at
one time, we were trying
to have it in a way
that all of those conditions be readily
available for the inspector that
will go to the field to see
that if they are in compliance. So
the enforcement is on them. We just
sign it
on the paper and it goes. They
make sure it happens. This
group of
inspector for zoning, they are basically
for these requirements because dps on
top
of that
has lots of other inspectors
that they do the commercials
and presentations, and
electrical and mechanical. So these
group of inspectors are on top
of the other inspectors that
dps has to
make sure that everything is being
put it in place and is built to the regulations. It
is built according to the approved plan. Not
just the site plan to the approved
plan. And
the other thing that dps does that
is very
important, all the impact
taxes. Everything else
that we, you know, our planning department have
on the policies that they collect.
and the difficult part is they don't all
collect it right
when the application goes in. There
are a
lot of different stages that I don't
even know, that I
know that because they discuss it
when
it's going to be, when those fees
are going to be collected. It is all
being collected by dps at the certain
time. A lot of
times, we
say they could not allow certain --
if you say the
park should be
built until 70% of the residential
is in place
with the last
occupancy of the 70th building, that's when
they are not going
to give it to them unless the park
is complete. So it is
a lot of coordination that they do
for what the say
in here and what goes underground thanks
to
them, that they follow it through
with all
the capable staff that they
have to help with their inspectors. And
mostly important with
the senior management that oversees and
makes sure they have the tools they
need to have to guetta had job done.
>> thank you. Thank you so much.
thank you
so much. So we will go onto the next presentation.
>>
thank
you.
>> thank you so much. Great job.
>> okay, great. >> so
I'll turn this
over to sam. And
let sam
introduce his colleagues up here.
>> yes, so ladies
and gentlemen of the panel board,
I'm
with montgomery county department
of services,
land development services
right of way, the section. With
me,
she's got the
manager for --yes. The
resource manager over at dps.
so
thank you for your time
and for staff for helping me put
it this presentation together. We
find it really helpful and think
it goes a long
way. Other thing we wanted to say,
we packed so much material
in this presentation,
and we certainly don't want to have
it be
a presentation, so please feel free to
stop
me or if you have any
question or want some clarification
on
the items, then we will be more than
happy to add
some more clarification
and explanation to
make it as clear as possible. So the
department of permit services, the
right of way section has three main functions.
the first one is we take
part in
the entitlement process. We participate
in the development review committee, and
we
provide all comments
that are associated
with public
right of way. Montgomery
county public provides those comments,
all
the way through
the preliminary plan. That's all stages
that will fall prior to
that like the zoning change,
all that. And dps,
the right of way section, provides
that
for site plan. So due to the site
plan, we'll take the lead. Before
that, they are the lead for
providing right of
way comments. Second function of the
right of way
section is for
issuing permits. So whenever
we have improvements during the entitlement
process, adopted by the planning board, then
the next
stage is for them to apply
for permit, so they could
construct it. Dps, by law, administers
all right of way permits. By that,
I mean,
they will need to review them, approve
them, and inspects
them to make sure everything is done
according
to what was
approved by their planning board. In
the third
function that we do is about record
plats and
the dps right of way section, along with
park and planning,
the planning board, and
the planning section, review
and approve
all subdivision record plats. One
that we'll
provide more details on all the issues later in the presentation.
so
where
are these
improvements applicable? The two
instances that we require this improvement, such as
the improvements that are adopted
as a part of the entitlement.
the first and more visible
one relates
to all montgomery county
maintained roadways. And the second
one, which is not, doesn't
come to mind
as easily is about public easements.
that
is for
public use. The improvements
for permitting, for our review
will kick in. The public
easement could include stone drain
easement, they could include
the public easement,
what have you. So that is
the second place that all their requirements
that
are related to public right of way will apply.
so the next thing
that
we'll have
to consider is when these requirements
that
apply to right of way
improvements apply and they need
to be decided. As I mentioned
earlier, montgomery county department
of transportation
provides all right of way related
comments during
the entire
process, up to and including preliminary
plan, which they will be approved
by the members of the
planning board
and become legally binding. Right
of
way section of dps reviews all those
during the site plan process.
and those requirements, again, will
get adopted by the planning board.
so then there are some requirements
that, I wouldn't
say requirement, but there are some
improvements that fib had can apply for.
and they are not subject
to the
entitlement process. For example,
somebody wants to connect their sub
pump to our county drainage facilities
or the
utility company
wants to repair their infrastructure. Those
types of improvements
are not
subject to the entitlement process,
but they do require a right
of way
permit, which our office administers.
and our review applies to anything
or I should
say everything
within the right of way. It could
be side wall,
it could be
utilities,
drainage facilities, street lights, street
trees. All
streetscapes that have
been adopted during
the entire process. They also include
the special such as the
strict
part of them, streetscape --
streetscape. The
next function dps does is review the record plats.
and we do
it alongside
with the planning board
and planning department. But we specifically
reviewed record plats
from two point of views. Number one
is from public
right of way. And the second
one, we
expect to management and floodplains. When
we
review record plats for public right
of way, we make sure
all of the
right of ways and easements are in
place. By the way, the
right of ways and
easements can be used interchangeably
and from the legal point
of view, they are subject to the same
part of the county law.
we make sure
all the improvements, all the easements
and the right of way are in place.
we also make sure all
improvements that we're adopted by
the planning board in the
time of entitlement process, pretty
much the
site plan are bonded. By doing
so, we
ensure
that those improvements
are implemented because of bonding improvement
means, in case the applicant is
not able to finish the improvements,
the
county can use the bond and finish it.
we
also make sure they
are specified under record plats. There
are a lot of things that need to
be
specified on the record plats. There
are easements that need to be
shown on the record plats. A lot of
them
cannot be done by means of plat because
of the amount of the
provisions that we have in each
easement document. We cannot do them,
but we
have to reference them on the
plat, especially
if they are existing. We also make
sure all
the legal processes are
done. Those are the processes that will
lead to determination of the exact
extent of
the easement or the
right of
way. Also they would expect stormwater
management,
for the public right of way, we make sure
all easements are in
place, the floodplain buffers, what have
you. All of
them are specified and all
prerequisites
legal and technical processes are complete.
we'll pass it on to mark
for the stormwater management
section.
>> thanks. Again, I'm the
water resources for
dps. Can you guys hear me okay?
I'm
often asked to talk louder. Yeah,
I apologize ahead
of time. I'm getting over a little cough. My
beautiful
voice isn't what it use today be. I'll
talk
a little bit
about stormwater
management and sediment control. We'll
go over a little bit of the overview,
so put this in perspective for you guys.
stormwater management is
primarily a
--an environmental mitigation process. We
look
to reduce environmental impacts that
occur due to development, which can
cause decreases in runoff a,
go into the drainage system. They
can cause increases
in pollutants that run off into the stream
system, and they could also
reduce the amount of water that soaks
into the
ground that is very important
to recharge those systems for their
health. That
basically relies on the groundwater recharge, so
the e are ductions
have to be balanced out. Again, as
I
said, this is an environmental mitigation
that is intended to reduce the
types of impacts that I just mentioned. This
is generally
done by slowing down and reducing
the amount of developed runoff, filtering
out pollutants, and encouraging that
infiltration of water back into the
ground. Some of the practices that
we have
used that you've seen
many times are drywells, rain gardens,
infiltration
practices, things of
that
sort. Next slide, please? The standards
that we
look at for stormwater management,
are actually set by the state of management
as part of their stormwater management
program. We will review
for those compliance items through
the delegation of
authority from the state to review
on their behalf. They do come out,
evaluating our program, routinely
every
three years to make sure we're staying on
track and
doing the things they want us to do.
our stormwater requirements are
found in chapter 19
in the county code. They actually
review those requirements before we
enact those to make sure they are
in compliance with
the state model ordinance before we
enact those in the code. The last
time we
did that was in july of 2010.
that's what we did. We went back and
forth with the state, back
and forth with the council, back and
forth with everybody that we could
think of to try to get everything
in line with everybody's requirements before
they went into code. But I
want to stress that we do our
reviews through the delegation of
authority, initially from the state
of maryland
to review on their behalf.
when we do review stormwater for compliance,
we work primarily
with the one
year storm event. It is a statistical
one year event,
based on recorded rainfall data that
we would have historically collected. Right
now,
that rainfall event is a
24-hour
one-year event of 2.6 inches. Recently
the
analysis were reviewed and some of
the
larger storm events were corrected because
additional information has come
in, as part of climate change
to change those. Interestingly enough,
the one-year storm event stayed right
where it was, partly because we have
so much one
year data because that's the most frequent
storm data that we have. It is hard
to change that to statistics without
a lot of additional data.
that's
the one year 24-hour event of 2.6
inches is the arena in which we
look for compliance primarily. So
it is not a big storm event.
the goal that
we have is to modify the developed flows
to reduce
the impacts to the ultimate
receiving stream system. That is the
overall goal we're looking
for to maintain healthy streams.
from the early 70s.
>>
and the review process. They have
to obtain approval
of the stormwater management concept
from dps, prior to go to the board,
if they are going through the planning
process. So we
want to make sure we look at these
to see if
they are using the
right assumptions, using the
right standards. They have given us
enough information as a part
of our review on the level, that they are
confident that
they are making
those assumptions. What they're proposing
appears to be --things like that,
we have the
benefit at the stage of looking at
a
lot of real design data. We really
see what those plans look like. When
we are going
through something, and I'll probably talk
about this in a little bit in a minute,
we
are going through something like a single-family
lot that is
being subdivided from one lot into three,
for example. We
don't have a lot
of exact design data to go on
because we don't have design plans
for the most
part. So we are looking to see if
we have enough data that we have confidence. By
the way,
this is also a state requirement
that is
in the state model ordinance, but
we do that for the
planning board to make sure that we
are comfortable, that there
is nothing from the stormwater management
standpoint that is
likely to change the layout of the
project later
on in a substantial way. Let's see. Make
sure
I'm not completely off track here. My
eyes
aren't
what they used to be.
this comes up all
the time. It is important to note
that while our stormwater management practices,
may
have some impact on reducing the overall
amount of
storm flow to some degree, that they
are not
intended and they really
don't serve
as flood protection as property protection. We
do have
a document we put together on the
website, that's called
surface drainage, that will go into
that in much more detail,
and it was written to us in corporation
with
our legal council. So it's a very
good document. I urge you to take
a look
at it. I won't get into that too much more,
unless you have specific questions
about it today. I just want
to point
out, our main purpose is maintaining healthy
stream systems,
that we do not get directly involved
in the civil
aspects of
the runoff issues very often. Next slide, please?
just to shake it up a little bit,
and then I'll
come back and bore you with
the
last two slides.
>>
yes.
>> so just to follow on what mark
mentioned,
when we would talk about developments, essentially
what they do is
they will pave over
what used to be surface. So once they
create
the area, they are
going to
increase the amount of runoff. So
what you used
to percolate into the
ground becomes like a recharge is
now going to flow off the property
and come towards
the right of way. So the
amount of flow will maintain
the right of way, associating the
drainage system that will
increase. So once that
happens, we have to gauge the
amount of increase of runoff,
which could translate to increasing
the flow. It can be accommodated
by the downstream existing public facilities or not.
if they can accommodate the additional increase,
that would be great. But if
they cannot, then the applicant
has a couple
of choices. Either they are going
to
upgrade the existing county,
stormwater drainage facile
I its, to ensure the capacity
is there or if they could
decrease the amount of runoff in
their property to make sure
the
water is held on property. Release
the
control matter, so it does
not down the system. If
it's picked, the applicant needs
to modify the stormwater management
concept
to design this system,
to incorporate the system into their
preliminary approval, which is going
to go to the
preliminary plan with the approval.
now --
>> do you go
back --I just
want to make sure. I think I know,
but I want
to confirm
that everybody knows. So dps
does review when,
if the additional storm drain comes
to public right of way? Separate the
stormwater management,
okay? So before they
do a stormwater management,
dps makes
sure that there is not additional
storm drain to
the public right
of way, correct?
>> it's depending on
where we are
in the entitlement process. Let's
say
we're in the preliminary plan. The
code
requires montgomery county
department of transportation to
make sure
the downstream drainage system has enough
capacity
for the development.
>> so they coordinate with the developer
to
make sure that
case happens?
>> yes. >> I want to
distinguish
this. When it is, and mark, you discussed
it. If it
is --because we will get a lot
of people here that they say
the development of
this property,
next
to me, is adding storm drain to
my property. At that
time, you know,
that is on
the civil engineer. That's the
responsibility between the two
property owners. The property owner
that originally is doing the development
or they are making it, you
know, two families. They are making
adu, or they are adding,
increasing the footprint or
adding additional, whatever. It's
their responsibility
to make
sure that this drainage doesn't impact
the
property. The unfortunate thing in
here
is that if they come to disagreement,
I don't think it's dps or anybody
else that can resolve this agreement. Because most of
the time --
>> that's a runoff issue
you're talking about that
I mentioned a minute ago. With that
stuff now, we moved beyond
the one year storm event, and I'm
glad you asked this question. We are
moving
into the ten year storm event to look
for
adequate capacity in the receiving
storm drain system.
>> is it
ten years or two years?
>> ten years. It's
the ten years
for the storm drain system.
>> for
the storm
drain system? But for the lot-to-lot
drainage, what
do they look at? If
it is not lot-to-lot drainage?
>> in
some cases, we
ask the engineer to show us
the studies that they have performed
to show they've done their
due diligence for their effect on
lot-to-lot runoff. We asked
them to do that in the ten-year storm
event.
>>
ten years?
>> ten years. We ask them
to check the ten year to show
they have done due diligence on their
part. We don't
review that study, but we may ask
them to
show us what they've done. We may
ask them to
show us notes when they visited the
property, who they spoke to
as well, if we have a real
concern about the lot-to-lot runoff
issue. What sam is
getting to
here is this area of runoff review
where we
actually do move beyond the one year
storm event,
which I mentioned before. From
the capacity and conveyance standpoint
through
the public storm drain system.
>>
that's the ten year.
>> that's the
ten year. We have
to make sure the proposed
development doesn't increase flow
to a point where the
receiving storm drain system cannot
handle it. That's more
of a public safety issue because if
it can't
handle it, then the water could back
up on the
road, into the roadway, and become
a nuance
or a danger during storm events
for motorists. So we have them check
that. The other
reason we check that and back to what
sam
mentioned a minute ago. They have
two options if
they are increasing the flow and
the receiving system can't handle it. This is
county storm drain or other municipalities
that will own a public
system. They will
have to check that. They have two
options. They can upgrade the existing storm
drain system, potentially, upsize
the pipes, so they could convey that
flow
and keep it off the
roadway. Or they can provide that additional storage
for the ten year
storm on the project itself, and
slowly release it through the small
thing to slowly
ease it in to the storm drain system
in a way they
could convey it over a
longer period of time. Where that
involves site layout is if
you are storing ten years worth of
runoff on a project, that takes up
a lot of room. That's where
we can have layout changes come in
to
play. Public schools will get into
the situations
sometimes because they're allowable
in residential zones. But
in some cases, the surrounding storm
drain system that is already
in existence was sized, predicting
there would be houses there instead
of the big dense public schools. So
you'll see some public schools with
ten year control
on those projects. That's specifically
for conveyance of that flow to
get it safely into the public system,
so it
doesn't cause danger to the motoring
public.
>> I understand
that. But I think that
what we need some guidance
is lot
to lot. Because we
have a
lot of unhappy public that they are
against, especially
right now that
we
are thinking about having some rezoning
that
they could
have, you know, duplex or
threplexes. That would increase, you know, the runoff a.
so then we would receive a lot of
complaints from the neighbors that
that increase, it's
coming right to my yard. What is
the right response to give us? I
don't want to put
you on the spot.
>> the right response
is on our county website that
was put together by the legal staff
to try to
clarify the situation for them. It
isn't anything in chapter 19 that
we can, that we have any design
standards for. There's reasons for
that, but I don't want to go
too far into that unless you really want to.
for the
document, it's a civil issue. Now,
it's
okay to increase runoff from one lot
to another. That is
not a problem, as long as there
is conveyance that doesn't cause property
damage or, you know,
something worse.
>> so basically it
is
on the engineers to make sure that sign-off.
>>
not
to set up the situation where they
damage
adjacent property. We are not in
the property protection business with stormwater
management. There's
a whole world of claims, looking
to see if that claim is valid. Making
it
a decision, who is responsible for
damage. And
if damage hasn't even occurred yet,
which is
where most of the concerns happen,
we don't even know if it will
take place until it happens, so that is
where they get involved.
>> but dps
does inspect when
the project goes under the construction,
does
inspect the requirement that the civil engineer
has signed off,
that this is not
going to make an impact. And if it
is reality that will make
them impact, then I guess --
>> we
don't review
to see it. We don't necessarily have any design
standards
to review whether or not there is
going to be an impact to someone's property
as
a result of runoff from the development. We
don't have that
in the code. In the document, I'm
talking to you about
this. I referenced you to the website.
>>
yeah, yeah, I
know what it is.
>> we do have, on
our
plans, a statement that
the engineer must sign that
is before we approve the plans, that
says I understand, it's in
the state model ordinance for stormwater and
in
the county, chapter 19, that approval
of this stormwater management plan
does not e are leave
me of my responsibility for the results
of my development on adjacent properties. I
understand that's
my responsibility, and I have investigated
this. If
there are any requirement easements,
letters of
permission that are required under
state law, I have given a copy
of those to dps
for their files. They signed that
statement. We also have a direct quote
from the code
on all the planned approval documents,
the planned approval
blocks that says right out of the
code,
approval of this is not
going to remove the responsibility
from
the engineers on the effects of the runoff. We
are
doing this for environmental mitigation purposes
only, that's what this permit
is for. I understand there's a lot
of concerns that will
go on when they see a development
going
on next door, and
I understand why that's going to happen. Unless
something has occurred, we are predicting
that there will be damage.
>>
so my
question was not that. That has happened.
does that have any role or not? It
is going to
go to that and has to go.
>> now, during construction f there is
a concern, we could have our inspectors
take a
look and sometimes things do get built
wrong there, is a problem that doesn't
go the way
it should and we have to get on the contractor
to fix something. That's
why we have inspection staff out there
all
the time, looking at these
things. Certainly we're
on top of that part. The rainfall
events happen. Maybe
it's a rainfall event like one of
these
large catastrophic ones we've been
having. It's above and beyond
anything we've designed for and damage occurs. Someone
has to
make a claim and they have to make
that claim
to determine if they are necessary. That's a
civil issue.
>> okay,
thank you. I just wanted to make sure
that all of
us will understand that. Thank you.
>> thank you. I would
like to add one
more caveat to that discussion,
and that is the county code, actually,
this
is not in chapter 49, which is the
chapter that will
deal
with public right of way. The building,
which is chapter eight, has the
provision that will say if
you add the
addition to a lot with certain characteristics,
they will
need to be listed enough.
and the
amount of additions to be more
than 400 square feet or
adus, for example,
because
you mentioned it. In cases like that,
you
need to provide
some measures for
that. And the lot
is 11,000 square feet. We have
certain measures outlined
in the county, that would try
to lesson impact of that
addition or that development
to the next door neighbor. That
applies under the certain circumstances.
>>
it's a
part of
the building code?
>> yes, yes. >>
so just
to piggyback on what mark said. What
I
mentioned earlier will apply to the
county right of way and associated drainage structures.
it
doesn't
really apply to lot-to-lot runoff.
okay. Now, I'm going to get
into a little
bit of the technical comparison
between the storm drain and storm
management. Please let me
know if there is any ambiguity,
I could open it further. But as mark
said, storm drain system
is designed based on larger storms. Where
we talk about
larger storms, they
are the ones
that happen in the smaller frequencies. For
example, the snowstorm
that we're
going to get
this weekend. That's considered large
storm. It has very low frequency. It
will
happen every 20 years, 50 years
or what have you. The storm drainage
system
in the county
is designed based on ten-year storms. To
be the other jurisdiction. For example,
state highway administration, designs
are facilities for some 25-year storm.
the
stormwater management, however, as
mark mentioned is
normally designed based on one-year
storms,
which is being 2.6 inches. But ten
year storms
is between five and six
inches. 25-year storm
has been about seven inches. So
our storm drainage facilities are
designed
to convey the large amount of runoff
that happens when the large storm
occurs. Which is completely different from the stormwater management design.
now, public storm drain systems are under
purview of chapter
49 of the county code. And they are
maintained by the county department of transportation.
private storm drain systems, however,
they
are mostly maintained by the property owner.
I
got to say by definition, the
storm drainage system is public, if
it
contains a runoff from public
right
of way or public easement. And it's considered reverse of that.
and also as
I mentioned earlier in
the prezzennation, montgomery
county department of transportation reviews
this storm
drainage analysis and their impact
on downstream
system, during the preliminary planning
process and all stages before that.
and the right of way
does it
on the
site plan, and the permit. To pass
it on to mark
to continue
the comparison between the stormwater
management.
>> all right, back to me now.
>> the storm drain verses the storm management continues.
smaller storms, we catch
it, we hold it, we soak it in
the ground, we filter it, we
work on it. Public storm drain, they
will get the heck out of it
there. They convey it and they get
it off the roadway. It's a larger
storm event,
more impact to the voting public. Take
it
to where
it needs to go. That's the basic difference between
the two. They catch it,
we catch it, hold on to it, massage
it a little bit, hold
better, then go into the system. What
do we got here? What else?
>>
I have a
question about storm water management. Is
there
an actual facility that filters the
water?
>> yes. >> that's
a part of
dps?
>> yes. There's
a whole series of those. Things like
the dry well with the roof runoff
and pipe it to an underground, a little
box of rocks
to get held there. The rocks will
maintain the ratio, so they have a
place to be stored. You can't
go anywhere, but so can the
ground. That filters, that provides ground
water recharge. A
little bit
of runoff reduction. We have
rain gardens, the practices, basically
landscape areas that
are designed to catch and hold the water portion of it.
so it does soak into
the ground. Some of these structures
have the drains, so
they don't soak everything into the
ground. Maybe
they are not compatible with all that much infiltration.
clays, things like that, they really
don't soak into the ground really well. It
catches
it, it slows it
down, then it drains
what can't soak in and beyond.
>>
is
this
similar to what they have?
>>
completely different from the system. They don't
want any rain water getting into their system.
the only
water they want to have is why it comes
out
of the hose, goes back into the toilet
or
your sink. That circular
thing. They don't want water coming into
their system. They want to account for
it as much as they can where they
are constantly fighting for
that. That's a different type of treatment
and that
is for sanitary sewer and public water delivery.
>> is your
department --do you all have
a program for rain barrels for residents
or do
you have that program or rain barrel?
>>
kind of a
branch to answer that one. Rain barrels
are
approved in the state manual and in
chapter 19 of the code for
use
as stormwater management treatment practices. They're
rarely used because they don't
provide much treatment at all. Rain
barrel programs, and
this is perfect timing. I was just
about to
mention montgomery county department
of environmental protection. They
have
rain barrel programs and they
have a rain program that
is not regulatory. There is no requirement standards
for
their stuff in their
program, but they
help people manage runoff on their property
and do similar
things the stormwater management do. One
of the stuff they promote
is rain gardens and rain barrels.
>> vision the division that shows
the visual parcel
and determines whether or
not the parcel percolates?
>> we require
as
part of our review that
they do a geotechnical investigation. If
it's going through the planning
process, it's a formal infiltration
test
that a firm has to
go out and do based on certain
standards for percolating. If it's a
single-family teardown and they
are building a new one, we have an
abbreviated form of that. But they
still have to get soil data,
so we see how much and what the soils
look
like and how much infiltration the
soils could probably take. Now,
when we get
to the septic section of the discussion,
we can
talk about septic fields and their
percolation
requirements because they have those requirements
as well that I won't get
into because I will have to make it
all up. But we'll
have the expert here to tell you about
it on that step. This is why
we're here a little bit because there
are
so many things that happen with water and
runoff that
it is hard to determine who is doing
what. Believe me, we
get all
kinds of mixed questions
from everybody, constantly through
311, everybody in our own department, asking
us
questions that are not permanent to the specialty.
we, and stormwater management, filter and
feed the storms for base flow
by infiltrating for environmental
mitigation purposes. They
will give people portable water, treats
the affluent right of
way, takes those larger storms and
make sure they don't back up
into the street
to cause people to hydroplane, and
convey it
to a safe location. Their conveyance
is work treatment,
and provides
it and treats it. For consumption
and use.
>> so mark,
for based on what you
said, I would like to add something
else. Correct
me if I'm wrong.
>> I'm not surprised. >>
I
think it is good
for all of us to understand because
when rainfalls come, okay.
>>
yes.
>> the first, I think, I would say
I don't know if that
is the same one yet,
but the stormwater management because
it -- it comes down,
it is something that we want
to manage because it is a slow, and
the dirt is
there, so we
want to manage. But after
that one year, that first
flash, it conveys because the storm
drain doesn't manage. It just goes. But
the reason it doesn't
need to be managed because the water has
already been taken away for you, or
to
avoid what you're talking about. But
the other one is
so fast that it doesn't have
time to take it. So the storm drain
doesn't do any kind of management
or cleaning
of the pollutant. It just takes you
to the pipes and
the pipes will go right through the
drain, is
that correct?
>> yes, we are getting
into hydrology one on
one now, there are no pdus available
for
this one, by the way. But yeah,
that's correct. A couple of reasons
why we treat the
one-year storm, the most frequent
storm. It has more impact on
erosion in the stream systems. It
also, the
first bit of rain that falls washes
off
a lot of the pollutants. That's what
she means
by first flush. We used to look at
that first half inch
as being the water quality. We don't
do
that currently, but it is still the
same. The number
is different, but the same philosophy. First
dirty part, we want
to take it and actually get it out of
the main flow and
let the rest of it go on. We want
to
segregate it in our capture practices,
get that dirty stuff here, lock
it up, let the rest of it
go straight on through for conveyance
only. If that
larger flow comes into the dirty
flow, then it gets mixed and it
will have to be cleaned
again. Our efficiency starts to plummet, so
the most efficient way to
do it, segregate the dirty
flow somewhere, treat it separately. I
was just about to talk about some
of this,
and send the rest of it where it needs
to
go because
it is
less treatable, let's just say. All
right, dep. Important to note, when
we put the
stormwater management practices in
place, state model and chapter 19
requires we
have an enforceable maintenance agreement
associated with those. You can't just
put
something in and expect it
to take care of itself forever. Somebody
has to
inspect it and maintain it. The
montgomery county department of
environmental protection is the handoff. Once
we close the permit, they pick up
the responsibility
for inspection. In
some cases, maintenance of stormwater management
practices. So they will go out
every three years at least, and inspect
all the
practices, making sure people are maintaining them properly.
the next slide. I think this is the last slide that I got.
that dirty flow and passing
the rest
of it right on through. This is between
how
sam's pipes and my pipes
work. The roadwater here is a public grate,
but
the first part of it will drain directly
into
that vegetative area, which is what we
call it a
bio swell or a retention
practice. Once that gets that first
flush of water in
there and it starts to pond up, it
goes into an overflow pipe that will
go directly through and the rest of it
will have to sit there and soak if,
and that's what
we talked about segregating the initial
flush into those practices,
right off of that pavement. We would
try to do
this wherever we can. We try to fit
the stormwater management in,
wherever it could be fit in. This
is one of the ways
that we do it. I believe this actual
structure was built by
dep as one of their l.e.d. Projects
because they do a lot
of those things on the side as
well for other purposes through practices. But
that's what this was about. That's
what it slide was intended to indicate
exactly that. So thanks for being
ahead of the game there.
>> patience. >> unless you guys have additional questions?
>> great, thank you. One quick question. I've
heard
of the concept called combine sewers,
you know. I grew up in chicago.
>>
parts of
dc still have
a combined system, yeah.
>> so
who is responsible? So that is
not --in maryland, that's not
a thing?
>> it is the sanitary sewer district
that does
the combined sewer systems. They do
take influent water in those combined
systems and
take that into the treatment as well.
>>
okay.
>> we don't have
that here. And I think dc is trying
to phase it out. Some
places still have a combined system.
>>
montgomery county
does not?
>> no, we do not.
any of the rain that flows
off of your property will go into
the storm
drain?
>> atmospheric runoff
is what we deal with. Wssc does deal,
in
some way with the atmospheric runoff
because there are reservoirs
that they use to provide drinking
water.
>> right. >> but
once it's in their system, they keep
track of how much
is going out.
>> right. >>
into the
portable system. People's sinks and
showers and the
water hoses in their front yard. What's
coming back into those systems, they
keep
track of that budget to make sure
they don't have a lot of influence
flow coming in like
you would have in the mixed system. That'll reduce their
efficiency of the
treatment and run up their cost tremendously.
>> my last question.
so we
have said from time to time that the
city has a house
that was built
15, 20 years ago. And the
runoff, they
had no stormwater management system, right? Just
whatever the rain soaked up?
>>
yeah.
>> now a
house that has built today on the
same,
scraped in the same lot and the
stormwater management system. So
you
are capturing the one year? I mean,
you
are ending up
with less runoff
than the home had before. Is that
typically right or not right? I know
we're treating it, but it's
only the one year rainfall?
>> yeah,
you have to remember what rainfall
event you're working with and
what lot. I think we're getting
to a lot of runoff questions. What
surface
runoffs from lot to lot requires in
terms of the rainfall
event to create that surface flow. By
the time we get past the one year
event
to cause some
of those larger surface runoff concerns,
we are beyond the captured limit of
the one
year storm any way. So also, please
bear in mind, when we're talking
about working within the one year
storm system, we
are not capturing 2.6 inches
of
runoff in our structures. There's
a calculation that compares that
developed runoff to a predeveloped
runoff condition, where there is also runoff. The
difference that delta is what we
are actually working with treatment
for.
>> right. >> so it might
be close to a 2.6 inch, if you are
paving the whole thing with concrete. That's
a big
delta. We are going to get close
to treating that 2.6. We call them
pes. Some of those
get up to 2.6. It may be down as
low as a pe of one inch that
the required treatment is providing
control for. Something that's not a very dense development.
it is
not much of an
impact. So it varies. Sometimes it's
2.6. But often it's not.
>> okay. >>
and those cases where we are tearing
down the house, putting in a new
one that didn't have stormwater before,
and we're going to have stormwater
now. We would try to get every bit
of that compliance standard provided
on that lot. But in those
cases where it is physically not possible
to
do it, we may issue a stormwater waiver
or partial waiver.
>> right. >> but
9/11 had that
partial waiver condition,
many times that finished modern lot
has more treatment in the one year storm
than
what was there before, previously.
>> right.
okay.
>>
and my last question may be you
or the other group. They're all in
the
same page on my
board members. The slight
plan and the record plat. I mean,
the record plat is more. The boundaries
of the site, you know,
the boundaries of the building,
all the easements, is that the record
plat verses the certified site
plan might
show all the other things, separate documents,
so everything is on the
same page?
>> yes. >> the
record plat is that shows the
lot lines, shows
the easements, the
legal restrictions and the conditions that
are imposed
by the
site plan process. They show the buildings,
the implication of the
curve and the pavement and the driveway. All that stuff.
those are the site plans.
so you can think of plat as the legal plan of the property.
what
the legal restrictions are on the property. The
lot line, easements, such.
>> and
just being clear. Okay, thank you.
okay.
those are my questions. This is great.
to get the
one on one. You guys are at the
4-point level. Thank you so much. Just
appreciating, knowing the process
and what you do, and how we all
work together. Any other questions
or comments from the board members?
>>
I could ask probably a thousand more questions.
>> I
already told them to tell me to shut
up if I talk too much, so
she shouldn't have talked to you,
I guess.
>> all right, but I really appreciate it.
you did an outstanding job, and I especially
like this photograph because it shows
how vegetation plays a part in control
and stormwater management. Thanks.
>>
and mr. Chair, I think we do have
a few more
slides on well and septic just to
end
it.
>> great. >> yep, yep, no, good. We're
here.
>>
and then I think that's it.
>> okay. There we go. So I guess I
was probably
suppose to it up there with those
guys. But I just wanted
to blend in with the audience, I guess.
my name
is jason flemming. I'm in
the dps oil and
septic section. I will
be here today to discuss the main
rules and responsibilities of our group.
so
we have a pretty small group when
it comes to the
size of the different sections. We
have
one supervisor, and we have three
plan reviewers and two field
inspectors. We also have to maintain
a certification as an environmental
health specialist through
the state's department of health. So
getting to the slides.
where our group comes in is anywhere
in the county
that does not have
access to the wssc system, public
water and public sewer,
that's where we come in.
for a
property, they need to have their
water supply on the lot.
that is on-
site waste water treatment system
or commonly
called a
septic system. So the
state regulations that
are delegated to us through the maryland
department of environment that
we
oversee are maryland
regulation 260402 for the
sewage disposal. We also
are in charge ofof 26403, the
state subdivision
regulations and then well construction
is through
260404.
montgomery county has their own well
and septic
regulations. That is in
27a.
the thing with our county
regulations are that we can be more
strict than the
state regs, but we cannot
be less strict.
in the
aspects of our regulations where we
hold a little
bit higher requirements versus the state.
a well and
septic review is usually triggered,
like I said, when there is a property
that
does not haves it access to the
water
supply
or the viewer system. That
is designated as a
w6 or s6
category.
just on
the approval process, this is
where I think a
lot of people here, the percolation
test, that would be us. It has to
do with
the septic system. I had calls where
people want to
know if they need to perc for their
well. Do not.
the water is there underneath the
ground. You just have
to drill a hole down deep enough to
get to
it. The percolation
test is
basically the
soil component of a septic system.
not all
soils are
the same.
there
has to be an area that the soils
demonstrate that essentially they
can allow the waste water
to filter down through the soil. That
is essentially what we are
using to protect the groundwaters of the state.
there are
requirements associated with that.
the biggest
one is in the
state regs there is a
four-foot treatment zone. So, that
is a
four-foot buffer between the
groundwater andand
bottom of t
he septic
trenches. The way that
we in montgomery county in
our group determine or make sure that we are
meeting that separation is that we
do tests. The first test that we
do is called a
water table test.
it is lowest
towards the end of the summer when
you
had the vegetation pull and grow and
the evaporation. The groundwater recharges
through the winter.
so, late
winter, early spring is when we go
out and do the water
table tests. They are dug down to
at
least 15 feet, and then
sometimes you will not hit the groundwater
table.
other times you
will. And then we would make
sure the septic trenches are installed
at least
four feet below that grounder water
table,
and it is time dependant. After that
we do
the percolation test. That can be
done any time
of the year.
again, that
is basically
to determine if
the soils in the
areas chosen
would support
a septic system. The different types
of
the systems that we use are
in-ground trench
systems. But if you have limitations
to
the property.
high groundwater table or a
rocky soil.
we want
that soil to act as a living filter.
there are
above ground systems. That is where
you hear
about sand mounds. So, maybe a
property that could not have a
trench system could still --you could
still
build a house and/or have a commercial
type
of facility using the sand mound system.
let me see.
what have I not
covered?
and then down at the bottom of the
slide
it talks about the requirements of the perc test.
the environmental health specialist will
go out and you
can actually see a
perc test in the
picture.
if it is determined
that it is a good spot
they will run the
actual percolation test.
to be able to create
a lot on a property that does not
have
access to public sewer, you need
your own way of
getting
drinking water.
when we are reviewing the sites and
the lots
it is required there be at least three
well
sites on the
property
they
will have the one, and sometimes if
that location does
not work you have
two alternates that
are already fitting in
the whole
puzzle piece. That
is one of the requirements.
those wells are typically at least 15
feet apart.
a will needs to be 100 feet away from
a septic system. 100 feet from any
stormwater management feature and
30
feet from building foundation, and
it has to
be upgrade of the septic system.
the septic
system requirements
you need to use conventional technology.
the trenches of a sand mound. We have
the ability
to use what we call alternative
or innovative systems. Those are
usually reserved for a house
that exists on a property
and the existing systems failed.
we would issue a
repair
per mit.
the septic area that I
was referencing,
the minimum size of it needs to be
10,000 square feet. A little under
a quarter of
the acre of the property needs to
be set aside
and reserved for the disposal of the
wastewater in
the septic area.
that must be large enough for
the initial system and three
future replacements.
a lot of the time people are like
my
whole backyard is the
septic area.
they don't last forever. Maybe that
is not for the
time that you or your family lived
there but the
house, the life of
the house.
>> may I ask a
question? When was
the requirementsrequirements for backup
systems and the
future systems implemented? We had
situations
where septics failed and they have
come to ask us
for access to sewer and water to extend to the public sewer
and water.
I know that we do
have situations in which that was
not in place at the time of
the construction of the building of
the system. When was it in place
and how do we handle situations where
we have, you
know, septic systems past their usable
life on
a lot that does not have the
capacity or hasn't been planned for
that capacity?
>> I believe that
the requirement for the ability to
create a
lot and to have backup area
is in the state
subdivision regulations around
1972.
>> we do have
lots that are older than that, and
a lot of the time they do
not have the
septic reserve area.
that is when it can
be difficult to find
a
replacement area.
worst case
you would put a property on
a holding tank.
seven-day capacity, and
you think you are pumping this every
couple of weeks
and it gets
really expensive.
what does it mean that a septic
field fails? Does that mean it does
not percolate anymore?
why can't they remove
the dirt?
it is not going to
be in existence anymore before the
septic failed.
my understand ing is
that it has to be undisturbed soil.
why can't it be disturbed
soil as long as you remove
it, bring clean soil and make sure
it is not compacted and
use it. Why can't they do that?
>> essentially it is because of what or
how
soils are created. They are
created over time.
they develop what is called
a structure.
the different structure of the soil.
that
is what we are relying on
for the wastewater to
filter through. So fill does not have
structure. If you would put a
septic system in fill
it would probably
just
come to the surface.
what does it mean when a septic
system fails?
you have
bacteria in the
soil that are breaking down the waste
and
they generate waste.
the space in between the
soil particles and the structure
clogs up.
the water can't
filter down through
that the system fails
when the water backs
up into your house or
the surface. This block
of the septic area is basically
all clogged
up.
>> dan:
I am --
>> we
have not come up with a structured
field to take care of
the issue for a lot of
houses.
sometimes they have to spend $150,000
or more to get connected to public.
I don't know.
to me it looks like that it may
be cheaper to get some kind of a structured
soil and replace it with.
I can't see why nobody has thought
about to do it.
that can be a good business. Maybe
you can go
in that business.
>> I suppose it
would
be, but you have to depend
on mother nature through freeze and
thaw
cycles.
animals and
insects going through and creating
a
soil structure. If someone would come
up with a way to
create a structured soil we
could do that.
>>
trenches, I thought that maybe it was
the old way.
it was dug
down. Now you said there are trenches.
if they are
standard trenches, are they a
couple feet wide by so many feet deep.
if they are
in trenches now and if it can
be linear.
I don't know, what is
the dimension of a typical septic
system for
a three
bedroom? We can talk
offline. I was just seeing
if theythey are not horizontal
anymore they are in trenches.
>> they are linear
trenches.
linear feet and they have
to be so many feet apart?
>> right.
>> yes.
I am trying to get an example
of a typical septic system in
trenches.
>>
the typical linear length. The trenches
are
two feet wide.
I would say
a couple hundred
linear feet.
200
to 300.
>> minimum
10,000 square feet times three.
30,000 should be set aside for a septic?
had that
is the question.
for an
initial system.
that includes the future replacement
systems?
>> yes. >>
okay. Okay.
>> within
that, you need
to fit
the
initial ones. And that the three
backups will fit.
it is larger than
10,000. You will need more linear
feet.
>> got it.
>> all of that together may make it
so
that 10,000 is too small.
>> okay.
thank you.
>> let's see. I think that
I have one
more slide.
just
really quickly to cover the record
plat review process that
we cover when
a plat comes in there are requirements
that we look for.
the first one being that they have
a final well
and
septic plan. It
basically starts as a test plan. They
are going
to layout the
property. This is where I am going to
put my
wells and
septic system. Test data comes in
and review it. It is
updated. The plan is presented and then
it is approved.
on the record plat the boundary of
the septic area must be shown and
a
20-foot septic building
restriction line. That is to
protect the septicseptic from construction
of structures.
the alternate wells that I discussed earlier.
the one most people
ask
about are how many bedroom house
can I build.
well, that is pretty
much everything if anyone has other
questions let me know.
>> this is great.
thank you.
every couple of months we get the
well and the septic approvals.
we are more informed now. Let us at them.
thank you so
much. This has been wonderful. Any
other questions or comments
from the board? Seeing none and thank
you.
this ends our planning board meeting
for today.
thank you. We will see you next thursday.