This meeting is being recorded. Good morning. This is the Council's regular November work session. The proceeding this morning is a hybrid meeting which is being conducted in person in via WebEx teleconference. The public may view through live stream available through the county council website. At this time I'm going to do a roll call of the council members. Dr. Jones. Good morning, everyone. Ms. Walsh. Ms. Rick B. Here. Mr. Youngman. Here. And I'm Deb Young. I'm the chair. I'm here too. So we will now proceed with our agenda. We have three things on the agenda. CB62, which was introduced by the chairperson myself at the request of Demarol Plaza, LLC, to allow school commercial as a permitted use in the OT zoning district. CB63, which was also introduced by the chair myself at the request of the Weinman Company, and this would allow self-storage indoor as permitted use, allow for reduction of retail square footage, and allow for residential uses in the CAC zoning district, which is located in on Route Route 1 and then because we just haven't spent enough time in our work sessions on CB61 we will again be discussing the Inspector General Bill as our third item on the agenda. So we're going to start with CB62. Mr. De Carlo is here to answer our questions, and if you wanted to give a little description of CB62, and then we can ask you some questions. Of course, and good morning, Chris De Carlo. I'm here on behalf of the petitioner who's Demro Plaza LLC. I gave a general overview at the public hearing the other day, but this is a council bill to add commercial schools to the OT district, which is the office transition zoning district. It is a floating zone. I believe that this is the only OT district in the county that went through that floating zone process back in 2013. The commercial school use is really for a tutoring center or a test prep center similar to a STEM tree or a cumin or a math nasium. And I can tell you that the genesis of this ZRA was that last February my client was approached by a potential tenant. One of those type of services that wanted to lease space and open space in the center. And when we went through the uses and talked at DPC, it turned out that, you know, a tutoring center or a learning center wasn't permitted by writing that zoning district or by conditional use. Even though there's a lot of similar uses such as nursery schools, child daycare centers, public schools actually, child day care centers, public schools, actually, personal services establishes other things that are similar in density and scale. So unfortunately, that tenant couldn't wait for us to go through this process so they are not currently signed up. But in order to get ahead of that, my client wanted to be proactive and put forth the CRA. So in the future, if a similar user came along and wanted to rent that space, they'd have that option to do so. Okay. I will get started with a few questions since I was one of the people who asked this item to be on the work session. So, I guess, and you may not know the answer to this question, although, why doesn't Office transition OT allow commercial schools to be on that list? I think, I mean, my honest opinion, I'm not... You can give me your opinion. Yeah, yeah, my opinion question. Yeah, I think it was an oversight when the 2016, there was a ZRA that went through that added numerous commercial uses including child day care centers, nursery schools. I think that's when dog grooming and pet grooming were added. There were 13 at that time. My opinion is it was just an oversight and it wasn't included in that list and you know that we're saying that because if you look at you know B1, B2, POR, PEC, historic office, historic commercial, all of those zoning districts have commercial schools as a category. So I my opinion is it was an oversight but I can't answer that for sure so Apparently the the issue here is parking is that that's correct. There's Well, it would require more parking spaces for a commercial school because that requires five parking spaces Well would so her 1000 square feet park so Commercial schools require five,000 square feet. Personal service establishments, which are hair salons, nail salons, they require 5,000 or 1 per 5,000. The same parking workshop. Which is already allowed in the OT. Child daycare centers and nursery schools do have a lower parking rate of 3,000. But the, so I guess, to answer your question, the commercial school 5,000 is not out of line with the other uses that are already allowed in the OT district because personal service establishments are allowed and they are 5,000. So it's the same. It's not an increase in parking from the other uses there. And for example, with this particular development, even though I know this is a broad zoning regulation amendment that would apply to any OT, to the extent it would, people go through the floating zone process, which was made available by the county. There, the makeup of this property is, it was approved for five buildings, there's four constructed right now. Currently buildings, one in buildings, two have tenants that are a hair salon and a nail salon. Those are personal service establishments. Those are parked at 5 per 1,000 square feet. There is one building that has total open commercial space on the bottom floor, and there's another building that has all fits on the bottom. One of the first floor, which is the bottom floor and there's another building that has all fits on the bottom. On the first floor, which is the ground floor. The, an example of this would be if one of those Harris-Lons or the Nails-Lon were to leave, none of my saying that's going to happen, but if that happened, a commercial school, a test prep center, could then be marketed to move into that space. It would have the same parking ratio. There would be no effect in the parking on that. The petitioner would have to go through a red line SDP process to note the new parking calculation. But it wouldn't increase the parking burden on the site. So what? OK. I'm going to go back a little bit in history because you all had, I'm going to go back to parking. Because you all, Demarall Plaza came in before us to get the over 55 housing, right? That's correct. And where is that? That is, and I don't wanna go, and maybe the Office of Law will comment, cause I don't, age restricted thought housing that came before you, I think, in 2023. Yes. The plan for that, and if you don't know Demor Plaza right now. Oh, I know. I think we'd probably all know it. Yeah, if you know the makeup, the top, there's, there's a lower floor, I guess first floor, second floor. First floor right now has the commercial retail, two units, 2,500 square feet total and that's been allowed since it was approved. The zoning regulation amendment that came before you in 2023 was to allow age restricted in the ground floor areas of those buildings that's currently being used for storage. They have walk outs to the back. The petitioner is going through that process to add those age restricted. The process for that is through red line SDP and then to do it in all 10 buildings is requires a PDP amendment. Because one of the buildings has to be shifted in order to allow the parking. And I'm hesitant to go too much in detail because the PDP amendment has been filed and that if it moves forward it will be a zoning board case which would eventually come before all of you and I don't want to okay you know all right go into that can you just tell us how many units so it would be it would be 10 it would be two units on each of in each of the five buildings so total of 10 units there about 600 square feet 625 so there meant to be studios. There's studios over 55 studios. And I'll be honest with you the issue with that is the, and that's what's taking me. Right, that's sort of where I was heading is back to the parking that is their room then for the parking of a commercial school and the hair salon and the nail salon and 10 new units, that doesn't include the two units that are there now, right? No, it doesn't. Okay, so it's a total of 12 units and the other two units, it's not like they're about 1500 square feet each. The other two units, the two units that are pre-existing. Yeah, 12,015. So, okay. Okay. Yeah. And are they one or two bedrooms? I believe they're one bedrooms. One bedrooms. Yes. And what's the parking like there now? I don't have it. I don't know. You don't know. I can't even have the parking. Yeah. I mean, I don't think there's any issues. I'll tell you when we went with the, you know, we had a community meeting as part of the PDP amendment last year before we submitted. There was no real issues raised or opposition. It's same, there's been no opposition to this that I'm aware of at this point with this commercial school. I think that, you know, the parking, and we talked about this, the planning board as well. The parking has to be looked at as part of the shared parking analysis to the extent a commercial school would come in here. And that's why it has to go through DPC to be looked at as part of a red line SDP. It can't just, there's just not a UNO issued for the commercial school. It has to go into the calculation and again, is that not really the commercial school being a new user, but to the extent that one of the existing users that have the same parking burden leaves the center. He doesn't have to go through a zoning regulation amendment process at that time to add a use if STEM, if a tenant that is a learning center were to approach him for that space, because that's sort of what happened last spring. We had someone calm that was interested in commercial space where the parking could be accommodated, but because this wasn't a permitted use at that time, we lost, or my client lost that. Was that the driving school? No, there was never a driving school, it was a learning center. Oh, it was always a learning center. Yeah, it was, yeah, so it was a learning center. That was the the the the the tenant was a learning center similar to a cemetery or a cumin or a mathenesium. Okay. That was it. It would be tutoring services offered to you know kids K through 12. And how many parking spaces are there now? Is it just the ones in the front? The parking is the parking you see in the parking. The parking is just what we see in the front. Yeah. And do you know how many parking spaces that is? I think. Around 60, 65. I have to look at the SDP. There's that, Manny. I believe so. Wow. 60 to 65. There's that many I believe so wow 60 to 65 Just it doesn't seem like there's that many but I'm always driving by it pretty quickly So I have to admit so like I'm stopping Looks like 57 a little under and It looks like 57. I'm sorry. A little under. OK. And I take it that at the intensity that it's at now, those 57 spaces aren't generally filled. Yes. I can't imagine that they would be. They're not filled. OK. So really, my biggest concern, because you've answered these questions about this piece of property, my biggest concern at this point is that the OT zone that you guys, the dimmer old plaza is the only entity that is that took advantage of this OT zone, but it has the potential to be applied to 2,554 parcels. It does, I think. That's concerning. Well, I understand that I think that the safety guard for that is that in order to establish the OT zone, you have to go through the preliminary development plan process, which is outlined in that zoning, those only regulations. It has to come before you as the zoning board and the quasi-judicial hearing in what you have to, the petitioner would have to demonstrate it meets all the criteria to establish the zone. So, I mean, to, using this as an example, that's what the petitioner and this, for this CRA, Demor Plasma did 2013, when they received approval from the zoning board at that time to have this floating zone descend down on the R20 property. You know, we're almost 10 years later in the because of the other steps in the process, the development's still not complete. So it's not something very quick where you just petition and you become an OT zone. So I know, hopefully that, while there's many properties that can potentially be OT, I don't think you're going to have an on slot of 2,000 people coming in and petition come up OT and I don't know if the zoning board would even approve that. So it's a very controlled process. I mean, that's one of the benefits of a floating zone actually is that it provides control to the county and the zoning board to determine whether or not it's appropriate in that area. Here for Dembro Plaza, it really made sense because of the location between Route 40 and residential behind the property. So it is a nice transition there and that's how it's worked so far. And if you can actually see the buildings, one of the big things about the OT zone are making sure that the commercial mixed-use buildings are compatible with the residential. And that's why you see that with Demro, like the pitch roofs, the brick, I think they're like 34 feet in height, they're made to look like a single family detached home to some extent. Yeah. And that's part of what the approval process would be, like as part of the PDP. So in 2013, that was part of what the petitioner had to do. So for any of these other properties, again, they'd have to come and prove before the zoning board that they fit in with the community or compatible with the community. There's a whole list. Right. So that. So the criteria. Yes. right I saw that yes the criteria yeah all right um uh miss wash did you this is your district did you have any questions it is not my district oh you stole that from mr. youngman okay do you want to go next mr. youngman I don't have any question okay all right, Ms. Wash. I'll start on the criteria because you guys just standing there, right? One of the criteria is that 50% of the property be pervious? No more than 50% of the site may be covered by impervious surface. That's correct. Okay yeah, so it inside out Is is that site as is compliant with that? I'm not sure I know that there is the SDP calls for pervious Surface in some of the parking areas. They're still going through that SDP process so much for if it's the current conditions or not Okay, cuz I mean just looking at yeah, just looking at the site as it is now and the submitted plans. It looks like the four buildings versus the five that have been approved. Don't even meet that requirement, right? There's four buildings built in place. There's four buildings built in place. There were five have been approved as part of the original zoning board case in 2013. That's correct So can can you I mean who do we ask that question to is that you I guess that be the Department of Planning and zoning Okay, I mean because I should have been approved before the planning board What does that mean? Who is online? Oh good, who's online, Fred and VCB? OK, and DPC, I don't need the answer right now, but I would certainly like it in the next week or so, which includes major holiday. It just doesn't look like, like I said, it just doesn't look on its surface as though that criteria could be met with four versus five buildings and so I really don't see how it could happen with five. So yeah, and I think that the answer might be is that I believe the parking area on the approved SDP is for pervious, not impervious. So the parking area would not go into that improvement of the improvement of the improvement of the improvement of the improvement of the improvement of the improvement of the improvement of the improvement of the improvement of the improvement of the improvement of the improvement of the improvement of the improvement of the improvement of the improvement of the improvement of the improvement of the improvement of the I'm not sure if it's a particular issue. I don't know if it's provisional. I have a chance to recognize that. I don't know if it's provisional. I have a chance to recognize that. I have a chance to recognize that. I don't know if it's provis issue, I don't think we have like all the facts in front of us. The SDP that's approved has like this calculation on it that says that for 23 apartments it's going to have 10 spaces per unit. I don't understand, but I'm not going to try and figure it out. Is commercial schools a defined term somewhere? It's a defined, yes, it's defined in the zoning regulations. Is that in our write-ups? Do we have that in our write-ups? Because I thought our write-ups focused on like driving schools. And it's all inclusive. It's driving schools, test prep centers, vocational schools, trade schools. It's all put into one. So it, Kuman or like how to get a, a driver's license or all that? It could, yeah, it's all on the same category. I mean, yeah. When I, I mean, I'll tell you when I initially talked with Department of Planning, is zoning about this last spring. I was kind of putting forth the position that I thought a learning center or tutoring center could fit into the child daycare, nursery school category or into just general office. But it was a department's position that historically it's been in this broader commercial school category which is the genesis of this zoning regulation amendment. Okay. Oh I can tell you was my clients the purpose of it was to do a learning not a driving school or any of those other things but was for a tutoring or learning. What's the plan? Isn't there like that O'Lenka music school that's just down the street? That is for, yes, it's for lots down the road. It's in that school's comic commercial. I think that's a proof conditional use for a music school, which is a separate category than a commercial school. Oh, I thought what Mr. Wembley just showed me said performing arts or something. I don't believe. I think there's a different portion that deals with music and dance. A business establishment which principally offers instruction for a fee in the fine or performing arts, or for vocational or professional training purposes, or in special skills improvement such as but not limited to driving schools and test preparation centers. So it is the case that if this is state R20, you could have had a CUMON, and now you cannot. Through a conditional use process perhaps. Yeah. Well, yeah, I guess I would imagine, I don't know what the O'Lenka property, what conditional use there have proved in. I don't think it's a conditional use for a commercial school, but it, because there is no commercial school conditional use. There's private academic schools and other things. I'm not sure what the O-Link-a-Property has as a conditional use of approval in the R20. Right, because then there's a daycare on the other side. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Do we have a list of all the other zoning districts that do allow schools to come with commercial as a matter of right? It's from what I can tell it's PORPC, B1, B2, historic office, historic commercial. And then I believe a new town would allow it as a right if it's only FTP, which there are some in new town through that process. And there's one in the Dorsey Search Shopping Center. Yeah, King's Contribus has one. Dorsey Search has one in their Village Center. It's on the front page of our legislative analysis. I swear I read this deal. Yeah. It's on the blue sheet. Do you have the blue sheet? Yeah. All right, I have one more question. And thank you. I will read again. Thank you. Because I can read this without asking you a question. My last question is for law. And I think I alluded to it at the public hearing, which is, I know you're worried about the figure of what, 2,500 or so properties that are potentially eligible for this based on the right up that we got from our LAs though this has been available to the public for 20 years and no one has taken them up on it. I did see that. So I feel like that has pretty much demonstrated that this is not going anywhere, given that it hasn't for the last two decades. So I feel like this is, was it your client? I know maybe not necessarily you, but has it been Dembrol Plaza LLC coming back for each of these respective CRAs? All except one, the CRA 197 was the bad at the accessory solar rooftop. That was a broader countywide zoning regulation amendment that it. But yes, all the other ones were, were down the floor. I mean, how is this not spot zoning? How would it be spot zoning? Because it is for the benefit of a singular property as demonstrated by the last 20 years of the use of the OT district and the series of ZRAs that has been presented to even this five members of the council versus preceding ones. But we're making these changes to the floating. Why are you I'm sorry I thought we were having discussion. Sorry. We'll provide you some right now. Okay. I mean I can get if you want to my opinion. Yeah no I do either way. That's I'm looking at loiter. Yeah, sure I heard yourself slow. I didn't want to overstep, but I think there's two issues you potentially look at when you're dealing with the zoning regulation tax amendment or When you're looking at zoning on a property once the spot zoning I think more with zoning regulation tax amendments You're looking at whether or not it's any legal special law In this case generally for my understanding of an illegal special law is when the law can only, it's for the benefit of only one property, and it can only ever be applied to one property in a matter of how it's written. So I mean, we all know the Glenn L. Country School when that was kind of successful. I knew that we were going to get to pipe stamps. I pipe stamps. That was it. Like it was so narrowly drawn. It could never really be used by another property. Here, while I understand your point that no one's gone through that process, it is an available process that other people could take up. And that's kind of the point of a floating zone. So because of that, there's two types of zoning, right? There's Euclidean zoning, which is the traditional zoning going back to the 40s. That's what we all have where you put your commercial, you put your residential, industrial, whatever. Floating zones came about probably in the 50s, 60s, of the newer method and the I'd, and the same thing as a planned unit development almost. It gives the counties more control. Practically speaking, they might look like spot zoning. The court has separated them out from being spot zoning. So the, I guess your question about whether or not a floating zone would be spot zoning, the way that the Maryland courts have looked at that is that floating zones are permissible use of the counties, police powers to allow a property owner to go through the process that was established legislatively to have this zone to send down. In the idea that it's in the public's benefit, essentially. That's why you have to meet all those criteria. If it were to be a situation through comp zoning where maybe the county just said, hey, we're just zoning this one property, I think that's when you have the spot zoning issue. But because it's through this floating zone process with the PDP and these other things in place, I think that's why you get around it. And when you're dealing with the tax amendments, it's really the special law question. And because other people could take available, could make a use of this, even though they may not have, I'm not going to sit here and tell you they have, but that is why in my opinion it would not be a special law, similar to the other country school. Okay. I mean, it's not just going to be a country school. OK. I mean, it's not just going to a country school. The argument that this kind of thing or that spot zoning is a foot was made very recently in the planning board hearing for the ZRA petition put forward by Omar Hassan. And it was your former colleague who was very adamant that notwithstanding that there were other, what is that, I don't know what the zoning district is there. PEC, other PEC districts, or PEC zone to properties, that that particular ZRA was being advanced for, you know, the benefit of a single singular Site or location or I don't know but it is different in regards to the floating zone That's not a floating sound like you're saying so you're you're you're understanding is that the floating zone Makes for a more lenient Consideration of whether or not it's spot zoning. Yes, okay Okay, that's all. All right, Mr. Rigby, do you want to talk about parking? Do you have your book with you? I do. I keep my book here. But we can certainly, Mr. Ticarlo, in your experience, do you know what parking ratios are based on? What they're based on? Sort of where they come from. How they come into existence. The facts that underlie them. The facts that underlie the parking. You know what I can't say specifically. That's okay, because there aren't any. Yeah, I'm not sure. The evolution of parking minimums, we had on street and off street parking. I think old, old, delicate city. And then places were looking for. They were concerned about overwhelming beyond street parking, so they required these minimums. And then over the last 50 years, communities have just sort of changed these minimums and changed them over time. And so that's probably, I guess the question is, in your experience, do the requested parking minimums have, do they play out in real life? Am I experienced now? Okay. Thank you. And in your experience, does Howard County and any other county you practice in, do they require more impervious surface than necessary? Usually, yes. And are you aware that in the most recent general plan, we are promoting the use of shared parking and approaching parking differently than we have in the past? Yes, I believe nationally that's being looked at because it's an issue. Yes, because we have this problem nationwide. Thank you. And I think those are mainly my questions about parking, so I really appreciate that. And then my question is for DPC. Could you share the definitions, the different definitions of the school uses? It might be helpful for the public to walk through sort of what is a commercial school, what is a public school, what is a daycare. I know that we've, this is something that I used to have a lot of questions about. And you shared your viewpoint and process with me and I had certainly found it helpful so it may be helpful for the public as well. Yeah, good morning. Absolutely. We can do that. Today I also have with me Jeff Goens and Jessica Bala and we can go ahead and answer those questions for you. Let me just go ahead and pop the definitions. Thank you. Okay. So the first question was the definition of a daycare center. That is a commercial establishment that offers or provides child care to at least nine children on a regular schedule at least twice a week for part of a 24 hour period. Under a license or registration issue by the State of Maryland for a child care center. And Ms. Director Eisenberg, do we have different criteria for center day care versus an in-home day care? Not to my knowledge, we do not. And that would be regulated by the state. Okay, thank you. And so then the other one was, did you ask for day treatment or care facilities as well? No, I think that it was a daycare and then commercial school and then a private school and a public school. Sort of all the school related. I'm going to put it on the top. I'm going to put it on the top. I'm going to put it on the top. I'm going to put it on the top. I'm going to put it on the top. I'm going to put it on the top. I'm going to put it on the top. I'm going to put it on the top. I'm going to put it on the top. I'm going to put it on the top. So for schools, we just defined school as academic school, an institution which offers an academic course of instruction operated by either a religious establishment or under a certificate approval issued by the State of Maryland. So that would be more akin to the private school. And then commercial school is a business establishment which principally offers an instruction for a fee in the fine or performing arts or for vocational and professional training purposes or in special skills, improvement such as but not limited to driving schools and just preparation centers. So what will you or how just discussed but would you not distinguish public school separate from other schools. Thank you. I appreciate that because I think my main confusion was the difference between a daycare and the commercial school sort of test prep arena. So I think that was one of the reasons why we have two different definitions for this. But I understand that's that's DPC's practice. And then this one's more for Office of Law. The question really before us is whether or not we add a commercial school zone, but much of the discussion has focused on the floating zone that this property is within. Are there any guidelines in terms of when we have an item before us that we should stick to the question before us or is it more broad and we can kind of go wherever Rome Rome wherever we'd like I mean I guess it I don't know what your policies and procedures say but the extent that's relevant the conversation Which is subjective I guess it it's pretty subjective and yeah and your work sessions tend to be fairly wide-ranging. Thank you. Okay, does anybody have any further questions? Dr. Jans? Ms. Walsh? No questions from me. Thank you so much. Okay. Ms. Walsh. No questions for me. Thank you so much. OK. Ms. Walsh. I am confused why Olenka is doing what is doing for sites down. I don't see schools commercial as a conditional use. And it's certainly not a permitted or accessory use under R20. Whereas daycare centers on the other side are. Yeah, I'm not sure about the specifics of that site. It's not my not my client No, I mean I saw that so I was like what's the difference? Yeah, I couldn't figure that part out I knew I'd salt when you originally asked about that in the OT zone now There is athletic facility commercial permitted limited to dance martial arts in yoga studios So when you said we were talking to music schools, I was thinking of the dance school. So you can do that in OTA now, which again, I think is similar to what the test prep center would be. Thank you. All right. No one wants to. Okay. All right. Thank you, Mr. DeCarlo for coming in. Thank you very much. All right. Have a happy holiday, everybody. Thank you, you too. Next up is, they're online. Okay. CB 63, indoor self storage. And who do we have online with us? Mr. Cole. Mr. Cole. And Eddie Linger. Do you want to start? We'll need to start. I actually do. Okay. Why don't you start then Ms. Wash? I was concerned and would love to be assured that we are in compliance on this particular CRA about some of the preconditions to filing or just general disclosure. One is registration of lobbyists. That's exhibition maintains and publishes the list of registered lobbyists pursuant to whatever the criteria is in our code. And I did not see you, Mr. Cole, on that list. I have confirmed last week that that list that's published is not maybe up to date and reflective of what's been actually submitted by lobbyists. But I wanted to confirm with you that you have registered with the county's lobbyists for the Wideman Company. Thank you. Council Member Walsh, my understanding is that we were. I will check with my administering. I appear today because we were invited. We have not begun lobbying on this bill, but I will make sure that if we are not registered, we are registered by the end of the day. Okay, thank you. And then the second one was the disclosures that are required both by code, county code, and then by the Maryland Public Ethics Law with regard to ownership interests and other corporate holdings of the petitioners in a given case. And that is a pretty extensive definition of who should be a disclosing party. I know that a disclosure was filed on behalf of the Wyoming company, but I would love some assurance that that Maryland public ethics law and its expansive definition of who would be on that list has been complied with. Yes, and I appreciate that. We certainly understand that Council's focus on that, and we, the one company quite frankly is not very politically active, and that includes, I agree with you that there is an expansive accomplishment of anyone who would have a financial interest in that company. So that disclosure is complete. And we understand that it continues throughout the duration of this ZRI being considered. And there have been no contributions made in the interim. Fantastic. Thank you. Um. I have something to say really fast. Uh, let me start with, um, I'm sorry, Dr. Jones, did you, did you want to say something? Yes, I did. Okay. Um, I just wanted to point out that, um, you all may not Windows, so you may not be seeing that. It's knowing outside. And you know there are no windows in CVG. And actually, I've always viewed this particular building as the safest place to be during a hurricane or a tornado or anything else for that matter. No windows, concrete bricks, so yeah, but yeah, well thank you for telling us. Hopefully we'll see. It's beautiful. I don't know how much it's in a stick, but it's a beautiful site. All right. My biggest concern about this ZRA without a doubt is that there are 49 parcels along root one that will be impacted. And we've already seen the CAC along root one, the commercial activity corridor torn apart by previous CRAs. And how do you respond to that? Yeah, I appreciate that question, Chair Young. The issue with the CAC is this compulsory commercial component that when the CAC was originally created, that the council at that time decided that they were going to require a certain amount of commercial and not just commercial but retail commercial to be built. And over time, previous councils with previous council votes have revisited that decision and determined that not only is it unfair for the developer, I mean no one's really going to shed any tears for the developer of new development, but it's actually unfair for existing commercial property owners that we are gliding the market with this retail commercial when they have existing commercial spaces that they're leasing and will now be competing against people that don't want to build this space. And so what has been done in the past with ZRAs is allow developers to buy down that commercial. Now in this instance the petitioner is the owner of a large commercial area and has understands the commercial market and says well I don't want to buy it down. I would like to keep some, I would like to fulfill the commercial requirement for the CAC and that has a residual tax benefit to the county. But in order to keep that commercial component and build the commercial component in the CAC, I need to allow one additional commercial use and I would like to be able to reduce the retail commercial. And also another thing to keep in mind is that the CAC zone was originally created over 10 years ago. And if you think of your retail purchases 10 years ago, pre-COVID, pre the, I guess, monster that Amazon has become in the interim. Maybe you did use retail more, but past ZRAs with commercial reports and testimony has indicated retail just doesn't work. So the question became not so much do we have this beautiful sim city that we design in a zoning regulations or do we have vacant commercial that is competing with existing commercial and do we have a race to the bottom in terms of what that commercial would be? We don't get the idealized version of what retail commercial would be, we get what is actually least and what the market will provide. So we believe, and the petitioner believes that this will allow CAC developers in the future to actually build the commercial that the CAC would like to have in terms of building out commercial space in Howard County is more reasonable in terms of the retail requirement allowing DPC and the planning board, they made a unanimous recommendation, but they also made some helpful changes to this. They said that rather than just reduce outright 50% to 20%, the DPC, the director of DPC, may reduce to 20% based off of surrounding retail. So addressing that question of the fairness to existing commercial landlords. And then the last change they made, we had sort of pointed out to them that under the existing CAC regulations, we could not have the entrance to our lobby along Route 1, we couldn't have amenity space, Jim, any outdoor amenity or any indoor amenity spaces along that root one frontage. So they said, well, we're not going to let you have residential units along that space, but you cannot have residential space because it doesn't make sense particularly for parcels such as the one presented by the US one flea market to not allow that. So I mean, I drive down Route 1 all the time. I don't represent any portion of that specifically as a District 4 Council member, but I haven't noticed a glut of retail. Actually, I would love to see more retail on Route 1. So I do think that that's probably an opinion as opposed to a fact and in fact one of the things that's supposed to be done is a market study that is submitted by the developer when you want a commercial reduction. That was required by CB8 2021. Or I should say DPC is supposed to base commercial reductions on market studies submitted by developers. Has your client done a market study and submitted it to DPC? So just to be clear, my client is not looking to have a reduction in commercial. If the council believes that the CAC regulation should be retained however it will certainly be up to my client. But within the Rama possibilities, they just build the commercial retail and let the market do what it will. So that is not part of this proposal. There will be no reduction of commercial. We're trying to build the commercial. And I think the reason why you maybe have not seen the quote unquote glut of commercial is because the CAC has yet to have a project that was built how it was originally imagined. The commercial requirements, square footage requirement of the original regulations would have far surpassed the commercial to residential of what we see for village centers in Columbia. And village centers aren't doing so great. So I think that the presumption that a governmental body that the council can say, well, you must build retail commercial and it's going to be great. I don't know if that is supported by the people that are putting money at risk to build these projects. Well, the reason why that requirement came in is because this land was not zoned for thousands of apartments. The idea was that we're going to let you build thousands of apartments if you also put in commercial. Then the developers saw opportunities to build thousands of apartments without having to worry about putting in any commercial because it's easier to do that. So and it's more profitable. So and yeah, it is a little bit harder to fill commercial, but it is still what is wanted and expected. And I guess I'm misunderstanding then what this ZRA is asking because I'm seeing reduces the 50% requirement for first floor retail and services to 20% by the discretion of the DPC. So isn't that a reduction in commercial or? I appreciate the confusion. So the way the CAC has written is that there is a larger commercial requirement, commercial square footage, and then there is a sub-sector of commercial that is retail and services. So it is very prescriptive in terms of this is what you must do. As a matter of fact, at one point my client was looking into sort of a we work shared office space and that would not count towards the retail and services of the 50%. So we're saying barbershops, nail salons, laundry, those are the kind of uses that would count towards retail commercial. So to be very clear, my client in this project, and again, this is a CAC-wide zoning regulation amendment, we are trying to figure out a way to build out the entire commercial requirement to fully meet the square footage, not buy down any of it, but also that the 50% to 20% relates to the retail and services in position that is currently required of CAC development. Now you know the other thing that's in here too is this indoor self storage as a permitted use. That's what your original ZRA states. And there's another self storage unit that's very close by. Again, I can't imagine that this county wants to see Route 1 filled with self storage units. I mean, this would apply to what was it? 49 pieces of property along group one. I think that's what it was. I suppose if everybody thought it was a great idea just to have group one be one self storage unit after another and make us the self storage capital of the Mid-Atlantic and everybody can just drive to Route 1 and put all their stuff into a self-storage unit. That's a great idea. But I don't think that that's what we were trying to get at with the general plan. And I don't see how putting this self-storage unit in the back of the parking lot, right? Isn't that where it would area where the planning board made a helpful revision, which was that the self-storage indoor and the full way, and this is how it's written in the legislation, is that self-storage indoor provided that the use is incorporated into a mixed-use development that includes retail and residential uses. And as you can tell from the other components of the ZRA, the CAC development process and having a CAC compliant project is quite involved. There are many different components that come into play. So I definitely appreciate what you're saying, Chair Young, I don't think anyone is imagining or recommending that Route 1 turn into, I know, I know you have a warehouse ZRA pending before you right now, you know, individual warehousing along Route 1. This is rather self-storage that could be incorporated into a marketable project for someone like the Wyman Company. Good quality residential with at least 20% of the retail on the first floor funding on Route 1. This is a project that my client is proud of pulling together and it's not so much of a Frankenstein monster where there's just self-storage thrown in. It's rather incorporated into the fact that we have a lot of seniors that are downsizing. We also have people moving from places that are maybe more affordable than Howard County. And so they can't afford as much space and they might need to put some of their belongings into self storage. It does make policy in the way. We have heard that argument. We have another ZRA for self storage. And I just, I do want to point out that the technical staff report said CAC zones could be adversely impacted with the removal of residential uses as a prohibited use on the first floor, allowing indoor self-storage facilities in an area designated as an activity center, make conflict with the plans revitalization goal of creating vibrant, walkable places that prioritize pedestrians. DPC recommends that DAP evaluate the project for site design and walkability. It didn't appear to be any walkability there. And that reducing commercial space, well, as opposed to a glut, as you called it, will reduce the already diminished amount of commercial space within these areas along the root one corridor. I mean, those are big observations from our Department of Planning and Zoning. Those are significant, from our department of planning and zoning. Those are significant, they're important, and having just spent so much time on HoCo by design, knowing that what we were trying to create when people were wanting to build, what are the total number of units, 201 and 255 units, on a single piece of property that the idea was to make it a nicer space, a place where you can get around, put some greenery there, have some first floor commercial where people can go to a coffee shop or Delhi or you know grab some prepared foods on their way back to their apartment and not have to walk I mean that would or I'm sorry not have to drive because that was you know you leave And unfortunately there's not a lot of good public transportation in and out of the county So you leave your apartment that that was the idea, probably driving, and in the evening you drive back, but then there are these commercial services that would allow you to do whatever business you wanted to do at the end of the day without having to get back in the car and continue to drive. I mean, that was one of the ideas behind Hoco by Design. And this particular, I don't see anything in this ZRA or the proposed plan that would do anything to promote those ideas. Yeah, I appreciate that, Chair Young. I'm certainly sorry to hear that. I would say that right now, the petitioner and the owner of that site is very proud of what it has there, which is the US one flea market. It's been there for not just decades, possibly even generations, and they're perfectly happy to keep that in operation. I would say that if that were proposed as either a ZRA or some kind of condition of use requiring a staff report from staff, I don't think the principles that you just described as being important to you would have been elevated by DPC. I don't think they would have said that the US one flea market as it currently exists is consistent with all of those goals. I will say that the proposal, and I hope that you would. I mean, we're not here to talk about this particular site plan, but I hope you would look at it again because there actually is a great deal of pedestrian connectivity. It connects with the existing sidewalks that exist along Route 1. It also connects with the neighborhood to the rear, which it currently does not connect in that fashion. And this will also provide opportunities for people to live in Howard County that don't currently exist. Apartments and townhomes are in desperate need, as shown by housing studies of Howard County. And so this ZRA is made to be able to facilitate redevelopment. But in the absence of being able to have a feasible development, I don't think any of the goals that you've described are going to be fulfilled. Can I ask you again, isn't that self-storage unit going to be built from what I could tell? Again, I'm not sure. Isn't that self-storage unit going to be built? That's self-storage unit going to be built. So, how are you going to be able to build an building behind the apartment building? Mr. Electric, you're not going to be able to. Behind the apartment building facing the town homes that are behind it. I believe it is going to be internal to the building. There is to it. I'm going to apologize. I'm going to just interrupt it. So we're going to keep speculating that the self-storage is going to be incorporated in the front of the building. It's not going to be a roll-up door type of self-storage. It's going to be incorporated in the building. We found that we are getting from into other talking management companies that there is a demand for that use. That's one thing. We did get an approval. I know Cheri Young, you said that we didn't get approval from a DAP approval, we did. We're trying to get it revisited because of some of the changes, but unfortunately they can't get a quorum. So we've been, the meeting's been postponed four times already, including the other night when my team went there. So we're working on that and And they gave a unanimous decision that they liked the plan that we said. And there's nothing to say that we can't use the 20% of retail for a coffee shop. It's whether the demand is there. We're finding other complexes that have retail have a lot of vacancy. So there aren't a lot of people opening up. That's necessarily coffee shops on what, that's why we're trying to reduce the amount down from 50 to 20%. So there's some storage. There's two computers on it. There's two computers on it. I'd like to maybe one's chosen on this speaking if you could mute. Yeah, there's two computers. The self storage is built into the front of the complex. Is that what I just heard you say? You can say. Yeah, so it's not gonna be incorporated in. It's gonna be open to the public, but it's not gonna be like across the street where you have a roll-up door. It's gonna be incorporated in the building. We've seen other designs like that, and we found that there is a need for that. Like Mr. Cole said, for downsizing for tenants that are within the building and then also we found, you know, you've got all the communities surrounding there that I think would support it as well. There's gonna be a side door that's gonna have entry into it with the driveway, so you're gonna unload, but it's not going to be like I said roll up doors and it's going to be, most people won't be able to tell but it's a self-storage. Okay, I have a few more questions but I'm going to yield to my other council members here. Mr. Youngman, did you have any questions? You'll to my other council members here. Mr. Youngman, did you have any questions? I'm just stuck on why the DAB can't get a quorum. That's pretty bad. That's pretty bad. That is pretty bad. So for what it's worth, when we're done dealing with this stuff, we're going to go deal with that. Yeah. Yep, I agree. People pay money to go through these processes and deserve to process. Yes. That's really inexcusable. Yes. It's totally agree there. All right, Ms. Walsh. Mr. Cole or Mr. Lickdor, can you talk more about this residential prescription on the first floor? I mean, I just, when I drive by the existing CAC developments that include residential, some of which seems very, very close to route one, it, you know, it looked to me like they were doing all the kinds of things that you're saying you can't do here. So What am I what am I missing? Yeah, I Honestly got some of my wash when when I came to this project and this Proposal I was shocked and we actually confirmed with DPC via email that We would not be able to have a amenity space on our first floor. Now I think part of it is, and this is where the CAC gets a little bit technical and probably too technical where it says, based on the amount of frontage that you have on root one, that is what triggers the prohibition on there being residential uses on the first floor of the frontage. So whatever might be happening with the other CAC developments, this isn't anything that facilitates more residential units. It is simply saying, if you look at how the US one market parcel is in relation to root one and you think that they would not be able to have an entrance to the lobby of an apartment building or to be able to have their gym for their amenity anywhere along that root one frontage. It just doesn't make sense. So that is why we had asked for the change. And I think the planning board made a good change to that, whereas our original submission had been that to remove the prohibition on residential uses in its entirety, and they heard us and what our concern was and changed that to units. So the prohibition on residential units remain, but the uses would be allowed. Okay. All right. Well, that explains why I was confused if you were confused. I mean, that doesn't seem particularly objectionable to me in theory. The other two parts of this request are though. And I do think it's notable as Cheri Young already went through the DPC staff report. It takes a pretty hard line in an atmosphere where that is unusual. And I think should be taken note of. We just had a self-storage ZRA request. In fact, it's tabled. We're probably going to vote on it at our next legislative session. The difference between your request and that one is that you have the benefit of already being zoned like I think the theoretical activity center would be. And that is that zoning district talks about being pedestrian friendly and accessible to all. I mean, the concept, whether it works or not, if you're going to take advantage of the parts you like, then I think that you should be bound by the parts that you don't. And I mean, I think no different than the OT. Everybody's availed themselves of this and everyone's tried to change it to suit their purposes over the course of its existence. But it doesn't work apparently according to you. And we're fixing it in this ad hoc manner that just makes it this Frankenstein and to the benefit of whoever the latest person is who wants to develop their CAC site. But you don't think it's achieving the objectives of good planning generally and good planning as described in our latest general plan. You know, I thought it was understood the mistake was putting residential on Route 1. I thought the solution to that was we were going to, you know, repurpose Route 1 back to its original use which was more industrial and I heard it in planning board. You know, you have the benefit of having someone who lives right there on the planning board. There's no grocery there. There's not, it's not self-contained. You are building into that corridor more people who have to get in their car to get anything. Anything, it's the complete antithesis of what that zoning district says in the county code now or the county regulations and what you know a looser thing we've put in the in the action plan and and you know I talked about this with director isember there is no guidance for these guys as they're trying to see if you're meeting the criteria of a new plan that has no affecting regulation or comprehensive rezoning. So I think particularly, I mean there is literally a self-storage unit across the street. We would be okaying a quarter of self-storage. Again, James Cecil mentioned this at the planning board. Montgomery Road for the north route one has a self storage right at the corner. It shuts that whole intersection down as though it's any kind of community center. No one goes to the self storage unit to meet their neighbors and hang out. It's not a third place. So just the bar. I mean, I think you're going to have people living in these places if you put too many of, I mean, that's what's going to happen. Meet back here when people live in them. But that's going to happen. So to me, that is a nonstarter. The problem is there's four other people on this council or the problem for me. Same thing with the retailer commercial. I mean, that's my next question is, I'm not, I'm not, I mean, I think it's awful. I think again, I wish DPC would weigh in here and say, this is the better solution or this is why we would advise that you not do this like we did in our technical staff report. But I'm not going to waste a bunch of time. I'm probably not even going to try to fix this by amendment. If three of my colleagues are going to approve this just like they have all the other CACs that didn't make any sense. So I'd like actually to hear if there's any, if there's any, what's the word? I'm so done. If there's any receptivity that's not really the word I'm looking for, but you know what I mean? Is there any openness? Thank you. Openness to considering particularly those other two aspects, the self-storage and this reduction in, I don't even understand it. Just do what it says. Retail commercial. We want these places to be places where they can gather with their children and do their stuff without getting in a car. And I think cutting these any more than we already have, which I didn't agree with then, is, again, counterproductive. So if there's an openness to talk about it, awesome. If there's not, you know, have at it and it continues to be this ad hoc thing that I have no control over. If I could just respond to the questions that we're going to have. Hold on. Okay, yes, of course. Well, I want to hear this answer first because we can end this part of our work session if the answers no. Yeah. So. Look, you start from the standpoint of we sort of know that the residentialization of root one, while seemingly a great idea 25 years ago, hasn't quite panned out the way that we'd like and we've given away a lot of commercial property. But the commercial we need now needs big parcels and that's so that ship has kind of sailed. It was hard for me two years ago on the blue stream thing to give up that commercial, but at least we were getting paid for it. The tough thing is, is while we want, I don't want to give up commercial. Like retail, like gathering places and places, like, you know, I just envision bookstores and pubs. But route one can't fill the commercial retail space it has now. And it is shocking to me that nobody's built a grocery store yet. I mean, that would seem to be an obvious thing. That was meant to never happen. Well, I just, and maybe that goes back to sort of where the Columbia Village centers have evolved. You can't put a crush on every corner because they're big and they want to capture a bigger market. I don't think it's a lack of openness because when I close my eyes and I picture the perfect route one, I picture exactly what was just described. But what do you, and I think you had said before, like, you know, it's not our, you know, maybe the new developers of this new retail space just need to work harder to fill it. Well, that's my fear is all the new stuff will fill. And what it hurts is the people with a little bit older stuff that already can't get least. And we're just continuing to sort of force this oversupply in the market. And that's the dilemma for me. I don't love it, but what do you do? You can't just keep forcing people to build commercial and small commercial retail type, again, not industrial or whatever, in an area that doesn't need it. But yet, once it's built in 30 years, when if you do need it, how do you get the space back? Well, you can't, because there's already something on it. So does it sit and wait for the market to recover or to need something different? I don't know the answer. Well, so I guess are you going to answer or opal or? Well, yes. I'm not regularly invited in conversation, so I don't know when I'm tired. But I think the, one of the problems with a grocery store there is the same issue as the village centers. And this is just off the top of my head, but you've got vice below, you've got green valley above, then if you head out 175, which is the closest sort of major road, you've got Costco, Aldi, Wegmans, Target, everything in that sort of snoring corridor that pulls a lot from Longreach and the other real, Oklahoma, from this west side. So like that corridor pulls from the west side eastward and then is pulling that business from the east side on Route 1 westward. So those grocery store anchors are pretty hard to fill. A modern grocery store requires a significant amount of space. We've seen some of the little model, which I think would be great here, but I just don't know that it's possible when you already have all the right down the road. So that is the str- I mean, I think the other thing to know is that I think CAC has been ineffective and poorly created from the jump. So all of the iterative changes to me are trying to take something that's unworkable and make it workable because it never was workable to start with. Because you go to poor Capital and the structure might be there for commercial but it's not filled and active. You know we only have a handful you know another broken egg a liquor store. Then on Mission Road where we which is another one that has had to do the first floor commercial. It's not the commercial that's there is not a levied commercial. So that to me is a real struggle. When it comes to the issue of self storage, I mean I would be personally glad if people all cleared out their garages and had less stuff, but that does not seem to be the way of the generations. So there is clearly this need for storage. My question is how it is the different impacts of indoor storage and the proposal within this project and outdoor storage because I absolutely, what was being proposed was outdoor storage. I'd have a huge issue with that. The Fort Knox, the what we pass on the 40 exit coming up, coming here, you're on 29, you kind of see it through the trees. That type of use would be. Hey, I'm contributing a lot of money to that oasis right now. So I'm just kidding. Clear out your stuff David. Actually don't because then it costs Howard County more dump money. Right. Right. We have to spend more to put it on our trash drain. But so I guess it's good that they're keeping it all in storage for now and delaying that cost. But if the petitioner could talk specifically about the impact of the indoor storage that you're looking at. And I recognize that this is relatively unfair because this is really about the use. But zoning is the wrong, I don't think zoning is the right tool that we are, it's not a tool that can get us what we want here. This is about the uses and I think that there's a lot more effort that goes into getting what we want that isn't in the zoning. I've attended multiple webinars from Maryland Department of Planning and over and over people from across the country who are working on these types of plans continue to say that these regulations are living documents that need to be iterated over time. And so now that we're in this overtime part, that's why the sort of evolution of CAC doesn't bother me that much because it started bad and it had to be made functional. But for the petitioners, if you could touch on the difference in impact for the different types of storage and then how your proposal specifically seeks to create that type of environment, that would be helpful to hear. Can I get some clarification about the types of storage? Are you talking about outdoor indoor or? Yes, and even I would say a standalone standalone indoor self storage versus something incorporated into a larger structure. Got it. Yeah. I mean, and I think in the context of this question, it's helpful to put this in within the zoning regulations and the uses that are allowed by rights, such as animal hospitals and teak shops, blue printing. These are types of things that if you talk about, oh, how terrible it would be to have self-storage, you know, you think of whatever space would be for self-stores and having a blueprint shop, I don't know if you are going to have a noticeable difference of the experience overall, but obviously this is a very intentional inclusion simply because of the evolution of the commercial market as the baby boomer generation is downsizing. These self-storage units are becoming a higher demand. It is also something that we're seeing self-storage type capacity projects being added to multi-family buildings because people are being forced to live in a smaller place is just because it's more expensive. But I would also say that in some respects it's being talked about in terms of not being conducive to a vibrant community. But the other side of it is that it does not have many of the adverse impacts that, let's say, a restaurant would have. On the earlier ZRA, there was a lot of discussion about parking. Well, restaurants have a very high parking requirement. And so the idealized version of what Mr. Youngman was talking about, what all the council members are talking about, which I think speaks to everyone on that council once power counting to be a better place and once root one to be a better place, but our zoning regulations don't always fit in a functional way. That pub might not be able to exist alongside that bookstore because the parking requirements are such that it eats up too much land. So this is indoor storage intended to be conducive and consistent with the residential uses. Ultimately, my client needs to put together a project that it can market and that people want to live in. And as it relates to, and I know this wasn't what was intended, but I just want to comment on it, as it relates to residential being a quote unquote mistake on route one, I would say that thousands of Howard County citizens and taxpayers call that place home. And I don't think that there would be any uniformity in them finding that it is a mistake. How would counties a very hard place to get into and live in and those are some of the more affordable new units that are coming online and we believe that this project as opposed to quote unquote benefiting one developer, it benefits redevelopment. The status quo defends itself very well. The status quo in this instance is a profitable US one flea market. In order to overcome the status quo, these are the changes that would be needed in order to facilitate redevelopment. I'm thinking because the challenge is that that is where we want to go, right? But we don't have the tools to take us there yet. And so we're ultimately responsive as we always are to petitioner and landowner activity. And it's also challenging because when we look at the new root one plan, it, you know, we've given up. There is no, there will not be a 12 mile long corridor that is walkable Baltimore County to Prince George's County. That is, that is not feasible or reasonable, but what is feasible and reasonable is nodes of residences and activities combined with industrial to the east on the east side and having these uses along this corridor that will be have multiple uses along the corridor. I think if it would be helpful to hear DPC's perspective on the indoor storage versus outdoor storage because that's the big sticking point for me and what their perspective is on the indoor versus outdoor. So what specifically the look and desire of the community? How it affects the movement and walkability around the community and I guess the alternative of you could have a blueprinting shop or animal and animal hospital, those types of uses. I guess I'm concerned. We don't want to make the same mistakes that they did when they first made CAC, which is you can only do X, Y, or Z, and no one wants to do X, Y, or Z in that zone. Sure. So in terms of indoor outdoor storage, I mean, obviously outdoor storage is more on-line consumptive than indoor storage. It tends to be more garage-like with bays and drive up to each individual bay. So it's less desirable in this case because it really doesn't facilitate that walkable environment. Whereas indoor storage can blend in with this surrounding buildings. I've seen that used a lot in adaptive reuse of existing, even commercial office retail space to be to have self storage put in those facilities as well. So it can blend in better with the root one environment to be indoor storage as opposed to that more outdoor storage bag or large component. Thank you. I appreciate that. Okay, so sounds like. I mean, even to what Mr. Cole said, the difference between a blueprint shop and a self-storage unit inside or outdoor is that one person is going in with a ball cap on, not making eye contact, God knows what's in the storage unit, no one's talking to each other. The Blueprint Shop is owned by John Smith, and people are going in and out, that's the foot traffic, that is the community building. You know who his regulars are, and that's where you go when you want to make a banner for graduation. That is exactly the difference. I mean, night and day. We shouldn't even be having this conversation. But put that aside, I think, for me, this devolution or whatever the right word is for the CAC unit, in regard to whatever the latest proponent of a new CRA is, is that it's just reverting to residential. And if it's just reverting to residential, then it should be subject to the open space requirements and the MIHU requirements that apply there. So if I look at our zoning regulations, this density here looks like it's about 25, 27 units per acre. This is only like a 10 acre site. 9. That's not usable. I'm still talking, please. OK, sorry, young was that. That was a comment. So if you have a pure residential site, which I think this would be most equivalent, and tell me when I'm wrong, Mr. Cole, an and RAPT development you would have a 25% open space requirement you would have a 15% MIHU requirement what are what's the open space requirement on the CAC property? Are we here to talk about commercial use? I think that's a good question and in fact it was one of the questions that I have how much open space there is on this property, because if they're getting all of these other things that aren't allowed in a ZRA, then maybe this is an opportunity to also put in some new requirements. Mr. Colden, do you know what was the open space requirements, CAC? You know, I don't know off the top of my head, and I think it actually, as with everything else in the CAC, it's somewhat convoluted based on whether or not there's a commercial buy down. But my understanding is that there is a substantial open space requirement. There is a 10% MIHU requirement. But, you know, those components aren't part of the ZRA. And I just want to emphasize again, and I understand that this might not be persuasive to some members of the council. But it really is about whether or not the council wants to see the site redeveloped or if it want, if the status quo is what it wants to maintain. I don't understand that argument because we're not doing this just for the benefit of your client, right? We're doing this for the benefit of every property zone, CAC. You're doing it. I mean, it's nothing to do with what your clients doing at that particular property. Understand that's your motivation, but theoretically that has nothing to do with our consideration. We're trying to figure out what impact this has not just on your site, but on all of the other applicable sites. And I think the question is to open space and the question is to MIT who is directly relevant because of the point I made when I asked the question, which is this CAC is reverting to high density, almost exclusively residential in a situation where you don't have the walkable amenities that have been promised in the zoning district. And then you don't have the livability amenities that would be available if it was, you know, addressed as a purely residential development. And that is what I have seen in these CACs that have developed with, you know, the littlest amount of commercial possible is there's no place for the kids who live there to play. And it is, again, counterproductive. If you care about making a place for people to live that they deserve, then it should have some of these other amenities that are built into the more applicable zoning districts. So I changed my mind, sorry, Ellie. I'm going to be requesting some amendments to add some of those back as we take out some of the commercial retail. The other thing I want to point out is the council has the right to undertake rezoning, don't we? If DPC is really going to not do anything about rezoning, I think at least the three of us who represent part of that 11 mile stretch, our root one should have a rural interest in taking a look at that entire quarter or its related nodes and figuring out what to do. At least there, because that is where the graveston has been made by proceeding departments of planning and zoning and in my view by this one by sitting on its hands, because we're going to keep seeing these ZRAs. They're going to keep having carte blanche because there's no definitive document or guidance and and more of these more of these isolated communities are going to be built and trapped in their cars to do anything. Go to school, go to work, go to get a piece of bread. So yeah, I mean, obviously a big undertaking if we don't have the direct support of the administration and department planning zoning and I have no idea what that looks like but It's going to be too long years or one and a half long years until the blackout. Where we're going to hear these over and over again. And so I think maybe we should proactively take some stuff. Are you trying to show me something? Okay, I'll stop talking. All right, thank you. Mr. Wembley just confirmed. It's a 25% open in CAC, 25% requirement in our APT and 10% in CAC. And that's why my kids don't have any place to play. My D1 kids. Do you represent this the petitioners parcel? I represent part of district or part of root one. No, I understand. I would just years you've said that this is not site-specific, but we've asked a lot of site-specific questions such as how much open space do you have on your parcel. And then you made this direct reference just now that you're, you know, the children that you represent don't have a place to play. And that's in respect. It's just this has been a very confusing conversation because there's a lot of things that go back and forth. Okay, I will simplify it for you. This is a very dense residential site by virtue of more and more revisions to a CAC zoning district. So the point I have tried to make now, this is my third attempt, is that this CAC district, notwithstanding its description in the opening paragraph of our existing zoning regulations, is not in fact pedestrian friendly. I can't think of one in my district that is, and I certainly know of others, and although, you know, maybe I'll talk to a school in one. Actually, I don't know that that's the case. It is not accomplished at schools. I think you said that at the start. And so my point is, if we are not going to afford the people who live in these high density residential communities, the amenities that are promised for them in the current CAC zoning regulation, then they should at least have the benefit of the amenities that would be promised for them were they in a residential zoning district. And the comparison I'm making is to the RAPT zoning district because that is the most similar in terms of density on this 10 acre property they're proposing whatever the number is I think 27 units per acre and RAPT allows up to 25. So Mr. Wimberley just confirmed a 25% open space requirement that would apply in RAPT would be only 10% in CIC and a 15% requirement for MIHU that would apply in RAPT would be only 10% in CAC. So we're losing 5% of affordable housing in the most dense developments. And we're providing the people who live there with even less place to hang out, to walk their dogs, to shoot a basket, to jump rope, whatever you want to do outside. Because it's not going to be hang out on this street on Route 1, right? It's just this is not resulting. This is driving these kinds of projects into a worse or worse project and no disrespect to Mr. Lickderm, whatever the Wyman plans are there. I haven't seen them. My binder is empty. But it has consequences. And in those particularly those developments, I'm thinking of Elkridge Crossing, where we have taken out these amenities without putting other things back, it's not great. It could be better. And it should be like all the other RAPTs in my view. And so I'm not going to try and make it again. I mean, maybe I'm talking in circles, but that's my point is that these projects are taking out the most beneficial part to an individual developer pursuing a given change while taking away the stuff that would be of benefit to the people who ultimately live there without all of the commercial and retail walkability that's theoretically being promised to them. If we will lose 100% of those MIHUs if it remains the flea market. For however long it remains the flea market we will not actualize what is in those underlying code whether it is 10%, or 15%, as long as it remains, it's current non-conforming use. So I think that there is a cost to inaction, and I think we should recognize that as well, right? There is a trade-off. I'm not saying it's better or worse. I'm just saying that it exists. The other piece is that you're saying it's just APT, but they are building these other uses. The space is there. It might not be filled by anything. We've required them to build a shell, and there's no one who wants to fill that shell in the market, except it seems for this additional self storage use. And I will just briefly share my personal experience in an apartment building that had in-unit sort of in-building storage, which is that my neighbors would ask me for help lifting the big heavy things out of there. And it was an easy ask because it was just down in the basement, right? And so if I needed to bring up my Christmas tree, I could go across the hall and ask for help. So I think there is a bit of a difference in an indoor self storage that is attached to a building where you have that connection in those uses versus somewhere that you would have to drive to and that's a much bigger ask. So I don't know of, I don't know, painting all self-storage users as shady people in ballcaps is necessarily a fair assertion. So I mean those are just my two points. One when you have it in building and it's accessible to the residents within the building, that to me is a huge benefit. I mean that is a big time benefit to those residents. If you get to store things close by instead of having to drive either to these outside bays while it's snowing or to this other facility somewhere else. So I do see this as an amenity for the residents in that community. And I also think we should recognize that there would be that cost of, you know, we don't achieve 10% MIHU. We don't achieve 15% MIHU if nothing is developed and it remains the flea market. Mr. Yanley. I think we went down this road. When D1 asked if there was any openness to like you didn't take a straw poll but you kind of asking that. You know, under listening to you, it's not just about the commercial space. It could be about outdoor spaces. It could be about outdoor spaces, it could be about something. I'm compelled to not force us to continue to build empty retail. But if in exchange for the ability to not build empty retail and to do some self storage, there's something else. CAC should have an outdoor space or something like that because you're right. We're just chipping away at CAC to the point where it's just becoming one thing. Then I would be open to an amendment to amendments like that. In the absence of amendments, I'm probably going to vote yes for this because I think that we should continue redeveloping and I don't want to build empty retail, but I think that there's things we could do to make CAC better and wouldn't be incredibly ownerless on anybody. I think we could do reasonable amendments. Not like 50% of the site has to be open space now or something like that. Parking. Right. There's a parking. I would not be open to doubling the time. I'm having throw in a lot of bike parking. And I can't be bought with bike. Oh, yes, you can be. Just to remind you, a amendment prefile is Tuesday, next week, because of the holiday. If you're going to have amendments, we need them. Okay. Are there any other questions or anything else? Dr. Jones has left us, so I know he would not have any thing to say at this moment since he's not here. Anybody else? No? Okay. All right. Thank you for coming today. All right. Bye. All right. Thank you for coming today. All right, bye. Thank you. All right, thank you. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to give you a second. Given the so extended openness. Can we not have amendments? Can we table this? CB 63. So that we have more than three days to work on amendments and don't do that to... I... I would be happy to do that. It's hard to answer without knowing what the sort of flipside consequences of that are. Well, the flea market's been sitting there for generations, so I don't think the timing is all that critical, but I suppose one could turn around and make the opposite argument. I'm not quite sure how. I just like to make informed choices. Plus, we don't have, apparently, a quorum for DAF, so I guess that also. Quits it. I guess that also. What's it? All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right, let's just take a five minute break. Okay, stand up. Break. All right. Are we back? Okay. We are back and we are going to discuss our citizen, I'm sorry, our Inspector General Bill, which thank you very much to our Howard County citizens who voted in favor of creating an independent inspector general by 86% of our electorate. It was very exciting, especially for those of us who were out at the polls asking everybody to do so, which happened to me, me. So I really am thrilled that we're at this point now and ready to vote on it in a week and a day. So I understand that the county executive has some requests for amendments and Ms. Rigby has also, I have no amendments to this bill. I should add. Yes, none. I was very happy with it. Although Mr. Cohn did have some suggested words here and there, which might end up working its way. And although, so that was the only thing that I was actually looking at. And should we start with the county executive? And do you have actual language for proposed amendments? Ms. Gantz? Nothing has been drafted. Is that, go ahead, would you like to come up to the table and you can start and then we'll go to Ms. Rigby. Is Opal back on? Oh, Mr. McClintock, you have joined us. Excellent. We missed you. It was a Quite rigorous debate there. 86% That was exciting. Very good. Yes. So Miss Gantz, you have an overview, but not actual amendments. That is my understanding. And I assume that these actual amendments then would be filed on Tuesday. Yes, ma'am. Okay. And what are your what's your overview? Sure. Thank you. So, you know, the Inspector General Board, we believe the appointing authority should be the general advisory board as opposed to, you know, so that we can make sure that- As opposed to the county council. You can just say those words- You can make sure that it is- Right out loud, yeah. Completely independent. And then the other would be recommending that each council member um, nominates one person and the kind executive nominates um, two individuals to um, to be um, part of part of that board. Um, and then uh, we also have some other technical amendments, some other things that we are calling technical amendments, just minor word changes and various things. And then the third would be that the advisory board reviews and makes recommendations on the budget. And who does, I'm sorry. The advisory board. The citizen board the citizen never said word reviews and makes yes and and makes recommendations on on the budget as well as for like outside legal counsel or anything like that that they that they make those recommendations to the council. The citizen, I want to understand the last one. First, the first one is the appointing authority, which is the citizen board, that the citizen board should both appoint and terminate the IG as opposed to the county council, which is what it states right now in this bill. Yes, ma'am. And the reason for that is to ensure that it is 100% independent. Okay. All right. And then the next one is the county executive gets two appointments. Yes ma'am. As opposed to everybody else who gets one. Okay, which actually is not how the bill is written at all. Nobody gets a singular appointment. Everybody can turn in as many appointments as they wanted. And as Angie knows, we would just put in those resumes without any names. So we wouldn't know who was doing what, who was turning in what resumes. And for all we know, the county executive could get three people on the citizen election board if the county executive office turned in the three of the best people that the county council was looking at. But that would just be because they turned in the best people. So we had actually discussed not having individual appointments. And the third one was that the citizen board would make recommendations and review and make recommendations on the budget as well as the ability for the IG to have outside council if needed. And whether the citizen board would be the one to suggest whether or not the IG would be able to access outside council. They would make recommendations. And who would they make the recommendations to the county council? Okay. But we don't have any verbiage for any of these things yet. We are still. Oh, go ahead, Janem. Sorry. They're in various stages of drafting and legal review. Various stages. Okay. Can I add one more thing? Yes. I think all of them to the like technical bucket. So the bill prohibits a former county executive from serving as the IG and we would broaden that to any elected official. I think that's a great idea. The other thing is preserving the term gross as a description of fraud, waste, and abuse in a couple places. Okay. Anything else? So, I mean, this is probably more in the weeds. But the Inspector General eligibility criteria, prior county service, the Inspector General is ineligible for five years. We would change the I.G. citizen board, prior county service, renders the person ineligible for four years. So we would want to make those two consistent, both five years. Thank you for putting that out. Are you going to put all of these in the same amendment? Okay, that's a good idea. And there are other, some other places where the board is required to like provide a report To the council we would add and to the county executive in a couple of those places and wherever we left that out We shame. Yep, we should definitely put that in Well, that's just my opinion. I don't know. Sorry, but I imagine that my colleagues would agree with that. Anything else? Yeah, ma'am. No. And I'm sorry that I wasn't able to respond to your call yesterday. My battery ran out of my phone, and this morning when I'm looking at it, I'm like, wow, I had eight phone calls yesterday afternoon. And I am just now seeing, yes, so I apologize, because I know that you were hoping to touch base before this morning on these amendments, which I also appreciate. All right, does anybody else want to ask the administration any questions about these proposed amendments before we can let them go eat lunch. Oh, okay. All right. Any questions now? Mr. Yemen, any questions? No. Okay. Well, you almost got to leave. But yeah. Yes. I mean, not actually about the amendments. So we're going to pre-file the amendments on Tuesday. And then we're going to vote on them by Monday. The following Monday. Yes. Yeah. Yep. Gotta keep this thing moving along. OK. Well, I mean, I'm just saying like obviously the sooner the sooner that we see that. And I do agree that breaking them into separate parts is probably the way to go. It's the way to go. OK. I don't know that I've ever seen Mr. McQuinton. breaking them into separate parts is probably the way to go. It's the way to go. Okay. I don't know that I've ever seen Mr. McQuentin talk. This is very exciting. You turned on! Yes, your camera. That's it. I don't know you. Did you have any Intelligence that you would like to share with us on our insights on those Amendments coming from the county executive's office Mr. McClendon. Really just to say that in the event that they want to talk with us, we'd be happy to have conversations as well. Most of which I'd have to think about, I don't see any substantial issues except for the legal council piece. It is, it will be highly unusual to have the board be in a position to render an opinion or to make a recommendation regarding the propriety of getting outside council when they wouldn't necessarily have operational knowledge of the reason for needing outside council. I know that's something we've talked about a bunch, and if they'd like to talk about that more, be happy to do so. But that major independence piece. It's OK. All right. I think that I don't know if it did coincide with these guys, but when I met with them and we started to talk about that piece, it brought up the whole concept of, you know, this oversight board is going to be subject to open meetings. I would imagine, right? And I don't know that we really have talked about that if they're not talking about a personal matter of replacing somebody and they aren't specifically asking for legal advice, they want to have some conversation about can we go higher outside council or can we do this or that like how do they do that if they need to talk about the specific case and the meeting has to be open. Mr. McClendon, you have had experience with this. Can you give us some insight on that? Yeah, sure. So, so there really needs to be, and I think there is the way it's written now, a, a very strong separation between the operations of the inspector general and the oversight of the inspector general by the board. That oversight really never crosses into the operational side. So, I'm trying to, the few times when you would need to go to outside council would be when you find yourself in conflict with the county, say, and it may or may not ever happen in Howard, but my gut tells me it will eventually. They may have a disagreement with an interview or with the access to data where the county says, no, we don't think that fits. And the IG is looking at the statute going, no, we think that fits. And we need the access. And we're now being denied. They may need to have independent counsel because their perspective is coming from a different, you know, a different interpretation of the ordinance. And when that happens, it's going to be driven by the nuances of the case. So the type of information that the board does not have and should not have. So you really can't even go into executive session to discuss the reasons why you need access to certain data when a case that the board isn't supposed to know about to then turn around and get the boards approval to go get outside counsel. Normally if we're not going to give the IG their own in-house counsel then they need to have the ability to to self identify that we need outside counsel it would be a fairly rare occurrence, but when they make that call, they need to be able to make that call on the go to outside counsel. And my suspicion is, is they will probably put out an RFP for a couple of outside firms to be on standby and they may or may not use them. It's a way that it works in many shops, but you need to keep that in mind when we talk about what the board's roles are. Now, as far as the board, I heard mentioned of reviewing and approving, if you will, the budget. Yeah, but that's how our county's called. There's no operational component to that. They're not discussing cases. They're discussing budgets. So those kinds of things we wouldn't have an opinion on. Did you want to ask another question because it does sound for what Mr. McClinnick just said that the idea of them having to be in a closed session wouldn't occur under the way that we have written this bill. Yeah, I think that sounds like the situation. The only time they're gonna meet with that board is if it is something that would be eligible for a closed session, and if it's open, it could be that once a year, talk about the budget or whatever their annual report is or whatever, but stuff that's going to be public anyway. Right. So, yeah, for getting that we want them to be removed from sort of that operational oversight. Right. It does, it has been a while since we've had to discuss that aspect of this bill. All right. Any other questions about, to Mr. McClintock or to the administration about the proposed amendments? Still not. Okay. Very not. Okay, very not. All right. This repeat will move on to your amendments. Thank you. So I'm just going to go sort of in order. Everybody should have a red line document that helps you walk through what the changes are. I just put them all in one for ease of reading. Many of them are not substantial changes. Some of them reflect the conversations that we've had as a group. And the first one is changing the citizen board. It's on page eight, line three. And that's just changing the citizen board to Inspector General Oversight Board, which changes rather than who they are to what they do. But if there's a different preferred, what they do, word, I'm open to that. Mr. Yemen. I thought it was a great name, and I've even adopted it and started using it. But given the conversation we just had with Mr. McClendon, do we want to get away from using the concept of oversight versus something else? I mean, I'm not married to citizen's board, I don't really care. Advisory. What did they, what have you seen them called, Mr. McClendon? Citizen, what? Advisory is very, advisory is very common. Advisory. Okay. Is there a consensus preference for advisory? I would prefer advisory. Okay. All right. Advisory it is. Then the next change. And this we did discuss. It's actually the next change, um, and this, uh, we did discuss it's actually the next, the next direct, direct change is on page 11. And that is online 12. And the part that I, where I had a, I hang up that I'm trying to, the problem I'm trying to solve is that we don't necessarily define what withholding or refusing to respond to a request for documents or information can mean if you don't get back to someone in three days, if the email on a Friday and you don't reply till Tuesday. You know, what, how do we make sure that it is clear, that everybody is clear on what it means and to refuse and how it works to engage with the IG? You know, I haven't had a chance to look at Stu Cohen's line by line, but I think this was also one of the things that he suggested changing to to 14 days. Does anybody know what nobody else has looked at? What's the either? The administration side. Like what would be a reasonable time frame? And so Mr. Cohn's, because I'm supported 14. I just put reasonable time frame, but I recognize that reasonableness is very different. Is somebody's, yeah, that's objective too. Did he do 14 calendar, 14 business? I think 14 calendar. I thought he did 14 calendar. Yeah, 14 calendar days. 14 business days would be, I was 15 business three weeks. Again, totally agree that we need this. I don't know, three weeks sounds like a long time. Okay, Mr. McClintock, what are they normally say? What's the reasonable timeframe to get back to the IG and give information or response? First, I don't have the red line, so I'm struggling sometimes to get, that's all right, I'll show the catch up. I appreciate it. With where it is necessarily in the ordinance, I'm looking at. It depends. And it depends because 14 days would paralyze you. If you were in a situation where the county or the department did not want to work with you and you're working on very simple information, you know, things that can be sent under an hour, you know, it's like, yes, all we got to do is just have somebody ship the file to you. Waiting 14 days would drag things out for months and months and months. But on the other hand, when the data that we're asking for is not something that is readily available, it has to be compiled, well, two weeks might make sense. In practice, what happens is, you know, timely access usually means if another director was to call you and say, hey, I would like to have this information for what I need to do, that's usually a fairly high priority project and They may say I can't you know about how about giving me two two or three days staffs working on this or working on that Okay, two or three days is gonna be fine But you're not gonna tell another director. I'll see you in 14 days because that's what the ordinance says so so there needs to be I think properly so that language of reasonableness in there, because I think most of you are going to, you're going to know it when you see it. You're going to recognize when a director or a senior person is slow walking unnecessarily, a very simple request and you're also likewise going to recognize that's not a simple request. And think, if you think downstream a little bit, it would have to be pretty significant for an inspector general to determine that the delivery of data access request during a course of an investigation merits calling out in that investigation, the failure to provide timely access. That's a pretty big deal. And the way it normally works on the practitioner side is I don't agree with the assessment. I put that in writing saying, hey, look, I don't think it takes 14 days to run that query. You know, I'd request that you produce that in four or five days. And you go back and forth, but over the course of the investigation, if they are routinely not providing for a long period of time, I'm going to build a record of that through communications. And if I feel like I've got an argument that is, it is obstruction, I'll make it and I'll have the backup for it through those documents. Very long version of trying to explain how it really works, but some component there of is absolutely necessary. It's just you can't tell whether it's going to be faster short. Yes, for a copy of a personal file, that should be within a day or two tops. Very different if you ask for somebody to do some data analysis on material that they have. So what have it said with holding or refusing to respond to requests for documents or information under this section within three business days or some other time period in agreement with the IG or something like that. Like if you, you're the IG and you recognize that it's going to take more than three days and you discuss that and the IG says, okay, I get it, seven days makes sense. Or as agreed to, but I don't want to call them the parties because they're not really parties, but as agreed to by the, I don't know. I mean, if you have to go down, if there's a desire to establish some parameters in the common type of data requests, which are usually fairly easy, I would say that I'd be more comfortable with no longer than three business days. That way, if it's something that can be done in a couple hours, then a couple hours is great. But that way you're putting a bar at three business days, something after that needs to occur. Even if it's just an email with, when can you have this, yes, that's fine. But that kind of creates the expectation that there needs to be a conversation and an agreement on what the extended time period is. Even if it's to say, we'll give it a try. We've never done this before. It's gonna take us a couple of weeks. Well, okay, we're at least discussing that now. There's been situations where people have had to go dig things out of archives. I mean, it can take time. It just needs to be a conversation. And your point is about the response, not necessarily about having documents or whatever the information or request was within three days, but that you have to have that conversation and respond. Is that correct? Oh, actually, what I was actually talking about the response. In practice, most of the time, they're very fast. Same business day. I'm going to say it has to be, but most of the time, they're very fast. Three days is pretty adequate time to shoot over a couple of Memorandums or a copy of an RFP. But this is all the county's decision, obviously. I would just say that when you consider processes that allow simple things to go days or weeks, you run the risk of turning that investigation into because that all just, it just continues to build. We make a simple request, we get a request, we realize we need more because we've read that then we ask again. And oftentimes over the course of four or five days, we get where we need to go, just in the customary piece of business, if you turn that into three or four sets of three or four days, now we're a couple of weeks into what's normally done in a week. What I hear is that there needs to be, or there's a desire to have some sort of a reasonableness time frame, but we are trying to do that in a space where the data and the requests are going to cover such a wide space. That's going to be very difficult to do. So, yeah, I think you're going to find that 75% of the requests can be done in a couple of days tops. You may or may not want to write that in there, but look, if you give them three days to respond, which is what I would suggest, or to seek agreement with the Inspector General's Office on appropriate response time based on the circumstances of the request, that gives everybody the chance to articulate why it's going to take a while and it helps establish reason, reasonableness quite frankly, which is what we're all, I think we're all looking for, is the inspector general being unreasonable, they want us to jump through hoops and drop my entire operation to go get their data, or is the director slow walking a simple request, that that's what we're trying to get to the heart of. So any process that you're comfortable with that does that I think will work. It would be helpful to hear the administration's response to that. I guess both the three days, but then also the seeking agreement with IG on the request. Thank you. So I think I'm going to kind of come back to what was said in the beginning right. It's going to, I truly think it's going to depend on the request and what is needed because if it's something that's like a lot of data that has to be gathered and things like that, it may take longer to the three days I I'm not sure that you know I'm not sure that that can be agreed to at this moment I you know obviously I think that that's something that we would need to talk about in much more detail because I truly think it it comes back to what the actual request is that is being made. Thank you, that is helpful. And I also just wanted to check on time because I believe our session goes until 12. Yeah, I mean, I can stay. It's, you know, we don't have that much more to do. I mean, if you want to continue to do this, we could probably stay, we could probably finish this at 12.15, I would think. We have captioning until 1230 We have and we have captioning until 12. You're just gonna try to write something up on the days Because I think that the tough thing that Mr. McClendon might not be privy to is You know, it hasn't always been easy to get information. So we do need something But if three days is too hard maybe the expectation within three days is either I get it or at least that conversation has been had. I think the conversation has been heard. You know so it's not just a ghosting and then within email documentation you know 10 business days or something like that like that's the drop dead like you have to you have to get it done. I don't know what the right. Well maybe that's clarified in a sort of policies and procedures rather than within the code. Could you be that would mean? That would mean that we ask the administration and the IG to work out sort of what are those reasonable time frames? What are those things? And that's something that the advisory board could participate in because that was one that I wanted them to be able to participate in the policies and procedures with the IG. I don't know that sounds like operational interference to me if the advisory board is telling the IG how to how many days to I would rather have the IG work it out with whoever it is that they're making the request to, as opposed to having the advisory board say, we should, we think that you should give them 14 days. I don't know. I met more of their office policies and procedures, sort of like how they're going to, you know, when they're referring to the green book, when they utilize it, what we have written in here, but adding. I wouldn't consider this in office policy or procedure. I think responding to that high G is a big deal. No, these are different things and I'm different. Okay, I was talking about it. All right, I was just getting the impression that you were suggesting that the citizen board would be the one who would say how many days. No. Okay. All right. But that kind of goes back to my concern that we don't have enough time to discuss all these things. Oh, we do. Because we're going to vote on this on Monday night, not this Monday night, but next Monday night, because we've got to get this thing going. It's going to take six months to set up. And we have spent hours, many more hours, discussing this bill than any other bill that's ever been before this body. So I understand that it's important to you to fast track this and just get it done. This is not fast track. We've been on this thing since June. We started last March talking about it. So this is almost, this is coming up on a year. If this was a priority to you, I would have preferred that you prioritize it in this work session. So this is, it is, it is a frustration. I will just move as fast as I can so we can have as much public discussion as we can before we are out of time. Okay, good. Which, this is not what's best for the county or the county. Well, if you had shared your amendments with us before this morning, then maybe we wouldn't even need it to do this this way. But what's next? H, actually, let's go back up one. On 11, line six, I think we should remove, do all things necessary to carry out the functions in this subtitle. I thought we had agreement in this in the work session together, but it was still in this bill. And so it's important to discuss it because it is here. And I think when you say, I just don't know what is in the prior nine things that would be beyond the nine things listed. And Mr. McClendon, you should have a copy of this of the red line amendment as well. So we're on page 11 looking at line six. I think when you put this in there, you open the door for a wide range of behaviors and my imagination has failed me in the past. And I would rather be proactive in removing this because I don't know where it could go. It's just a catch-all phrase. I wouldn't remove it either. Okay. So there's two notes for removing it but I may find two yeses somewhere else. You might. Okay. So we want to keep the door open for whatever. Then we have page 12, line 28. This is, so I, it was, I was hoping maybe Mr. McClendon or someone could explain more about the advisory letters portion. I'm open to them. I just don't understand how they're generated, who requests them, what their purpose is. And so the addition I had was that the Inspector General shall include policies and guidelines for advisory letters in the Office of Inspector General policies and procedures. So we could, that was the sort of a solution I had proposed to that, so we would understand what they are. Mr. McClendon, do you have insight into the advisory letter process? Yeah, and I think I just heard that they should be, you know, kind of defined in the OIG's policies. And I agree with that, in short, because I know time is short on this particular call. Advisory letters run a wide gamut. It can be the request from somebody else. It could also be the inspector general putting out an advisory letter to. So one thing straight up front, inspector general advisory letters carrying no no wait or precedent in law, which you do see like some federal offices do where they actually refine and define the interpretation of a regulation. We don't do that. They will never contain findings because that will be the, which you would see in a completed full investigation or auditor evaluation. But what they can do is to point out that we have reported on issue X before and our assessment of the following year or two indicates that there has not been much movement on that. We suggest that the issue be prioritized or looked at again. It could be a request to the county council to consider an ordinance changed. Maybe to impact the way that procurement's done or some component of county law that's relevant to oversight to make those kind of recommendations. It could be a department head asking for advice on how to deal with something within their operation. I would suggest, and I know I provided some commentary earlier, that that swath be left very broad because they tend to run the gamut. And that anybody, I like the language is in there now, but anyone who requested advice has the ability to submit a response and that response will be posted. You could even move the advisory letter to should. It's supposed to shall publish on the occasional instance where an inspector general may say, hey, look, we've done an assessment, and we believe that the county's cyber response system is an adequate, I don't wanna post that. Yeah, no. So that will obviously be re-branding not her. Yes. In confidential way. So there are people in the forest. She became the CAO. So she takes cyber security very seriously. There are reasons to exercise some prudence. But the reality of these things are is that they do not carry the weight of a full investigation They aren't they aren't findings and recommendations. They are usually observations things that were we we ask the council to consider We ask the executive to consider I don't know if if that's sufficient or not that is very helpful. Do you happen to have a legislative definition available? It's funny you say that the answer is no because it is different every single place that you look at. It's actually the subject of developing white paper for the AIG but right now it's not there. Okay well you know it's not like that white paper will be helpful in developing policies and procedures. So thank you. The other one I had was on also on page 12, line 18, and that's just specifying the type of days. It says, this is about response, so that is the subject of the report 15 business days to review and respond to the report. So that it used to just say 15 days. Okay. My desire was for specificity. All right, sounds good. Here. 12. And then 18. While we have director Bennett here, would you be able to touch on the, because we went past this. It's the discipline provisions and how those would work within the classified system. So if there's retaliation against an employee or anything like that, how that would function within our existing system. Thank you. Good afternoon. Hello to my former colleague, David McClendon. Yes. I knew that you two had worked together. And you finally told me this last week when I ran into it. Yes. The Tickle Wild to get that information out of her. Yes. I just learned. So the nice to see you again. So I was. Yeah, I think the issue of discipline would be handled just as we do for any other issue, whether it's in fraction coming to us, you know, through the notice of the inspector general, or any other, you know, way that we would learn of an infraction. We would have to look at the intent, look at the circumstances, look at the impact. We would consult with the appointing authority that takes disciplinary action. We're very thoughtful in our disciplinary actions. We look at the weight of the infraction when we judge what the discipline should be. All right so no issue all good. Great. Next on page 18. At the very top of that page, this is about the duties and responsibilities of the advisory board. And there's a couple I've missed. Sorry, we'll have to go back because some of the red lines get lost in the sauce there. But on page 18, adding in a number five, the advisory committee shall participate in the process of establishing and reviewing the Office of Inspector General's policies and procedures. So in this section, this is really more about these are how we're going to do our investigations. These are the way we say we're going to do them, not how they're doing specific investigations with the overall policies and procedures. Is that something that you've seen before, Mr. McClendon? No, not really. We typically write those and provide them to the oversight committee over the advisory board or what have you. And there's usually a very healthy dialogue, you know, if they don't understand components of them, then, then we listen to that and we try to, we try to make, make them is understandable and as clean as possible. But with, with all due respect, the advisory board, depending upon who's on it, is usually not in the best position to implement the operational implementation of the principles and standards that's usually assessed during peer review. But having said that, I wouldn't want to leave anyone in doubt that that that is the type of thing that you you produce to the board. You explain what you've done, why you've done it. But there's a difference between that and having review and edit capability, if you will. What about if it just read the oversight committee shall review the office of Inspector General policies and procedures. That's fine. They can respond if they have concerns and they can't work it out in discussion, which I'm very sure that they will. Yeah, they can go ahead and file a response back. I have zero trouble and I think it's healthy to have a good dialogue and a review process. There's just a difference between a review and an approval, I guess. Yeah, and I definitely didn't think that in writing the language that the advisory board would be writing them, I figured they would be receiving from the IG and then having a response about the policies and procedures that they've received. So I'm fine. Yeah. I'm protecting that to reviewing. I just think it's important that, especially as they get started, and if you participate in the process of reviewing rules and regulations, then you know the rules and regulations a lot better. Yeah, I just got hung up quite frankly on the participate piece because that's subject to a little bit of interpretation. That's it. Yeah, and I'm fine changing it to just the review. Can I ask a question on that, though, before you move on? Doesn't this also depend a little bit on Kano, who we hire to be the IG, and who might be on that oversight board? Yes. Like the best IG we can find might be awesome, but it's never been an IG before, but they have all the other characteristics where we might have some retired IG sitting on the citizens board. Like, and I'm not talking about ongoing, I'm talking about the initial setup and writing of the procedures from scratch. Like, should we leave at least some wiggle room for us to allow? If there's an expert on that board and the IG's not an expert, where do we just? I'm open to not because ultimately I think that decision, the final decision of it should be the IG's decision. Okay. And I would, I would hope.G. would avail themselves to experience council. You know, if if the if someone on the advisory board is saying that this is a good idea and this is why I think that it. I'm totally fine changing it to just review because that means that the person on the board should make the case and that the I. IG would have to accept the case to make the procedure change. The other one I had is on page 17 line two. It previously wrote. I think I've read this incorrectly. I had it changed from no member, shall serve more than two consecutive terms to may serve more than two consecutive terms, but I was thinking it was the reverse of it. So I will undo that one. And then the other piece is the shared appointment of the executive and council to the board. So the way that we have it currently is that any member could submit any amount of names to this process. And you could have a few members submit one or two. and they count executive. Yes, I just met like any member in the process. Any participants. So those participants would be the council on the executive. Any of our six elected officials? Yes. So we don't know who's putting in those names. We don't know where the names came from. It's purposefully. Yes. And so and I I saw the benefit came from. If. Purposely. Yes. And so, and I, I saw the benefit of that. And when other people look at it fully around, if there are certain members of the board pushing certain items, then you would know where those appointments came from. So say, the executives to appointees in this proposal. The executive has no to appointees. I understand that in the bill you wrote, the executive does not have any appointees. I am talking about this portion of time is to discuss the proposal. And so it's very important that we understand the proposal so we can accurately have a conversation about it. So in this proposal, say that the executives two appointees are pushing something in the advisory board that you think is unethical or problematic, then you would know. You would have that transparency of the appointment to know where the appointees came from and what may be influencing them. And I think that's that that transparency is a benefit. I think that personally, I don't want to make any changes. And I can give you, we can go through all the reasons again, which we discussed for hours and previous work sessions, but I think that just picking the best people is the way to go. And if we have, we get 15, 20 resumes that are sent to us blind copy without knowing who they came from. And the county executive ends up with four people because they were the best people. Then that's how it is. Or if a council member ends up with two and somebody else ends up with none, because we just wanna get the best people on here, I, from my perspective, that creates the most independence. And even if we did say, for example, no, that the county executive's two and point, first of all, I don't know how we would ever know that the county's two appointees to the citizen board were trying to interfere. Not as a sphere. You wouldn't know. As it's written, we wouldn't know. But let's, no, I'm saying if we adopted what you want. Yes, so that's what the county executive wants. Yes. The county executives is right. Okay. I understand. The public meeting. You agree with it. You have the two appointees. So that's how you would know because. I don't know how we would ever know because I would assume that the citizen board wouldn't share the fact that there are two county executive appointees who are interfering. Or we might not know because those two county executive employees are interfering without the knowledge of anybody else. So we would need to appoint the members by resolution and the resolution can clearly indicate which elected official is nominating which member. I understand. I understand but that doesn't then these seven people are now gathered, and I would never give the county executive to them pointies no matter what. But then the seven people are gathered, and because at, where do we find out that who, what, you're thinking that no, no, no, I'm talking about then we would know who did what, but I'm talking about down the line. citizens board participants are doing something that they shouldn't be doing by getting themselves involved operationally or making terrible things and doing terrible things. And now we know that one of those appointees was from the county executive. How would we even know that? We would be able to see what's occurring in the meetings and we would be able to link that back to who was in the appointment in the resolution. So that's how the public transparency would be there for people to know who made the appointments and the points that are being made by those appointees. And these people are appointed for six years. So then what? What do you mean then? Do we then as a council remove this person from the citizen board? Well, then I think it's something that should be discussed with the advisory board, right? We have concerns. I mean, shouldn't we have an opportunity for that discussion or do you? And I think the other piece is that it is, I don't agree that sending everything blind copy and then because there is nothing that prohibits members from meeting outside of that process agreeing on a certain number of candidates and having the majority vote for the candidates that they submitted. What changed your mind on this? Because I mean, I don't know. agreeing on a certain number of candidates and having the majority vote for the candidates that they submitted. What changed your mind on this? Because I mean I was surprised when you agreed with the proposal that you agreed to during these years. I was in different during that discussion. I said honestly what let oh no that was about yeah you were not were not at points or the, yeah. I just continued to think about it and the, and after the discussion for me, it's the lack of transparency. And I've certainly been, we've all had different situations where multiple council members have agreed to things without us, right? Where three council members have come to an agreement and we're on the outside of that decision, right? That's happened to each of us. And so, well, every budget it happens to me. So, what are I'm just asking you, you were in favor of the structure that is described in the the filed bill. And so I just wanted to know what changed your mind, because this is a pretty big departure plan. If you recall, I felt very strongly that that was not the way to go, but I was outvoted. And I raised it repeatedly, because I thought it was very important, and I continued to be outvoted. So I'm wondering what was the additional piece of information you were not given during those voluminous hours, whatever the right adjective is that changed your mind to now advance this proposal? Have you ever looked at something from sort of head on and then as you move around it, you see from a different perspective? That's that's where I came on this. One of the principles that we talked about in the charter amendment was the importance of shared appointment to this board. And I understand that the process and the other thing is that when we were talking about the benefits of this, it was that well we don't have, we don't want to restrict to geographic, we want to do the most qualified best people available. Well, I still think that can happen. We don't have to restrict our individual appointments to our specific districts by any means. But I think that there are trade-offs. I think that we lose out on the transparency if we go this blind coffee route. And I think that there should be a balance. And this to me is a more balanced approach. I honestly do believe that it will mean that we will end up with a bunch of people from Howard County who will be representing individual council member and the County executives' interest on the citizen board. We've seen that in various other commissions and boards. And I just think that keeping it the way that it is is the way it should be. But that's my, I'm not changing my view on that. Nor my. Made that clear. Nothing is being changed. No, you'll create a no, except for advisory. I do. Yeah, that's okay. We did change a couple other words. We changed a word. We changed a few other words. We got some consensus. Yeah, we do. And then the other piece is in section 22, 1203b, 3. This goes back to who can be investigated by the IG, which public or external entities exactly. Am I concerned on this one are things like health, social services, HCCS, HCLS, HCC, these sort of shared state and county funded entities and how we approach these. Where are you? It's section 22, 1203. So that is... Thank you. Thank you. Did you... I don't see that you changed anything. No, it's just because I have a question around it. Okay. I don't... I don't have any changes to make. I just don't... I don't, I think we've talked a lot about the HCPSS aspect and the preference for an MOU to be signed between the IG and the school system and to work with the MSDE inspector general because they have one, right? But I don't think health has one and I don't think social services has one and so You know how how to how will the IG engage with these departments and what And what would that process be and what is our expectation in terms of who is included under the entities. Mr. McClintock, how do you do that as an IG? How do you, or does your, is your, are the IG positions that you've been in more circumscribed? Do you have outside agencies that you've investigated previously? And then how did you interact with those outside agencies? Yeah, to be honest, it can be a point of friction. Most of the time it's simply following the money. And if I think I heard HHS or Health Department in that mix, I have never had an office that had the expertise to look in probably into the operational side of a health services agency. I've had health services agencies fall within my jurisdiction, and we will look at procurement, budgetary issues, expenditures, things like that. Within that organization, just like we will look at it under any other, when you have shared services, it can be difficult because sometimes the money loss, right, it goes into the pot and then they spend. And if you have say state contribution and a county contribution, then who's dollars, who's that is usually resolved between the IG and whoever is on the other side of it at the state side. So if they don't have their own IG, there is, you know, going to be some other entity that is in charge of it. But I will be honest with you that you do occasionally see conflicts. When I was in Baltimore City, the school system was very uncooperative with it. And those are the types of things that may require MOUs between jurisdictions, but they will fared themselves out from the perspective of this bill or this ordinance. Again, and I say this repetitively as I'm sure everybody's picked up one, I would give them the breadth to follow the county's funding into wherever that may go. If they need to work on MOUs or to partner with another applicable agency to figure out where the oversight is, then they will do that. I don't think it's gonna be possible, at least I haven't seen it. Be refined and cleaned up in something like an ordinance. Just it just varies too much. Thank you. Thank you. And sure. I mean, I think this will be a more longer-ranging question. But I think having for our understanding as council, having the understanding on the entity side is helpful. So we can follow up later on that. All right, you're great, 1220. Is that it? Here we go. All right. I see David already left. Yes. All right. David McClintock, you have gotten us through one of the most difficult situations and processes and pieces of legislation that we have faced as county council. I don't think we've ever relied as much on an outside advisor as we have on you, but you have been such an incredible font of information and resource for us and so available and it really, if you needed, like, I don't know what we can do for you. Do you need somebody to make a recommendation? No. Whatever we could ever do to repay you for your time and your expertise, we would love to do it. You're back up here in Maryland. You know, we would love to see you in person and we have a little dinner in your honor. Oh, you muted yourself. Yeah, that's incredibly kind. I will say why I look at the room there. I've come to appreciate Howard County's diligence on this and I've mentioned that many times you all really are doing a phenomenal job at putting together what is going to be one of the best in class pills from what I can see. And I must say I have not seen on you in quite a while but once again, Howard County is making good choices She's one of the best you happy to have her as well. Thank you. We think so too. We appreciate that All right, well, we are adjourned. Thank you all